Synchronize to Google Tasks using the new API

[Mads Peter Rommedahl]

Hey. So far, synchronizing GTG with Google Tasks has been impossible due to the lack of an API. However, this months an API was finally released (http://code.google.com/intl/en-US/apis/tasks/index.html), so I suppose this should be doable now?

[blurry (brendan-robert)]

Sync with Google Tasks API would be an awesome feature, as this would also provide immediate synchronization with Android apps (such as GTasks) that also sync to google tasks.

[David Elliott (davidrelliott)]

Yes, this would be awesome. I enjoy using GTG, but the lack of Android support is killing me. I'm on the move a lot and have to stay organized with my smart phone alone.

[gdupont (ger-dupont)]

+1 vote

[Sander (sanderpoks)]

This is certainly the killer feature that has kept me so far from using GTG as my primary task manager. Because syncing with my android phone is essential, I've been using gtasks + google calendar tasks for this purpose so far. This has to get implemented.

Google calendar has multiple task lists. I suggest the way to work with that is to allow creating pairs between GTG tags and GC task lists in plugin preferences. All tasks in GTG with a certain tag will get synced into a specific task list. All tasks in a specific task list in GC will get synced into a specific tag in GTG. Would work the best, I feel.

[Sander (sanderpoks)]

Actually, screw the waiting. I'll try to implement it myself.

[blurry (brendan-robert)]

@Sander: you're a better person than I. I installed screenlets and pointed a web frame screenlet at this URL to hold me over while waiting for GTG to catch up: https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig

[Michal Gielda (michal-gielda)]

I was thinking of helping Sander implement that backend but then found a branch which is apparently concerned with the same and its owner is well advanced in the work. I marked it as related, I hope this is what I was supposed to do ;) (I'm new to lp, so sorry if I got something wrong).

[dr.frankinfurter (dr-frankinfurter)]

@blurry Chrome/Chromium supports turning web pages into desktop applications and I believe Firefox has the capability as well with an extension. Wrench menu -> Tools -> Create Application Shortcuts. Seems to be the most lightweight and simple solutions to having a syncable task list on Linux.

[iwtctw (avalonofsaber)]

+1 vote && @Sander: you're so nice!

[Sander (sanderpoks)]

Thanks a ton for your support but as Michal said, when we were preparing to start the work, he found that Madhumitha Viswanathan had already all but completed it, so currently, I'm not doing anything productive, just waiting him to finish.

Madhuvishy, If you'd like any help, let us know. Seems there hasn't been much commit activity for a month.

[Dylan Justice (dsjstc)]

Is the work in progress publicly accessible? If so, could someone please post a URL here or in the GTG wiki?

[Michal Gielda (michal-gielda)]

see http://live.gnome.org/Madhu_GTG_Backends and the related branch.
I've run it on a Ubuntu vbox image, and it works, but provides no possibility to change the user and very little configuration.
I asked the branch owner if that's going to change and if I could help, but it appears she's on holiday or sth - never got an answer...
Madhumitha are you there?

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Michal > Madhu is a Google Summer of Code student and this week she should complete her project (writing backends for GTG) by Aug 22.

[Madhumitha Viswanathan (madhuvishy)]

Michal, Sander, and Dylan: Apologies for the late response. I have had poor wifi connectivity during the summit, and hence couldn't work/respond.
Yes, the branch has only basic sync, and needs polishing. I am doing this now, in the last week of GSoC, and it will be fully functional by 22nd. Will link it here then.

[Michal Gielda (michal-gielda)]

Great! Thanks a lot for the update, figured it out you had no access to the Web. We'll be keeping our fingers crossed for your final week!

[Manuel j. Pol (manuel-pol-gmail)]

Hi, anything?

[iwtctw (avalonofsaber)]

Still In Progress~Sigh.

[lorenzo11 (coutey-lorenzo)]

Good luck to finish this great feature !

[Michal Gielda (michal-gielda)]

I knew we should have asked: the 22nd of which month, exactly?

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Michal> August :-(

I haven't heard much about Madhu since the mid-August and in spite of several mails where I asked her for her latest code, I didn't get too much response. :-(

There is a branch lp:~gtg-contributors/gtg/madhu_backends where I merged the current trunk of GTG and madhu's latest code.
I would like to continue in her work in that branch until they are in a usable state. Stay tuned :-) (Hopefully for not so long time)

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Update: I've rewritten the authentication for Google tasks backend using the proper GTG mechanisms. It means, that you can now login with your own account - it was not possible before. I would like to ask you to test it if it works for you.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't properly reviewed other parts of the code and I am not sure what it will make when using it for your tasks. By testing you are aware of that code is not 100% perfect and it can affect your tasks.

[Michal Gielda (michal-gielda)]

thanks! I'll try to test it this afternoon, if I can get ahold of a Linux
machine - I'll be at my parents', but a vbox Ubuntu will do. If I don't
manage, it won't be until tomorrow. I assume you sent that out to everyone,
so pretty soon we should have the fix verified. That's great! As for Madhu,
I kept asking her if she was at it, and she kept assuring me she was, but
never made any update, then complained that she couldn't push the code
because launchpad was down, then fell totally silent and it's been several
days now. I assume she just didn't manage, too much work at the university,
but she didn't want to admit it. A shame, because we offered help and the
issue wasn't that she didn't get it done but that she didn't have the guts
to ask for help.
Cheers,
M.

On 1 Oct 2011 14:40, "Izidor Matušov" <email address hidden> wrote:

Update: I've rewritten the authentication for Google tasks backend using
the proper GTG mechanisms. It means, that you can now login with your
own account - it was not possible before. I would like to ask you to
test it if it works for you.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't properly reviewed other parts of the code and I am
not sure what it will make when using it for your tasks. By testing you
are aware of that code is not 100% perfect and it can affect your tasks.

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[Jose Celestino (japc)]

Kudos, it's syncing!

Some issues:

- the top level tasks appear with the content and subtask tags inside
- tasks with no due date appear with due date 30 Dec, 9999, must be related with the way store de due date for those tasks

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

> Jose, I've made a quick fix to solve those two problems. It should be working know...

Unfortunately, there is instead of a name of a subtask its id. I think it need more deeper fix (do not loosing subtasks information when updating).

Thanks for the feedback!

[Vasily Makarov (einmalfel)]

I'm awaiting for this feature with no patience too!
I've download madhu_backend branch head, install it and see no g-tasks sync :( . Only Gnote/tomboy/identica backends.
How to enable it?

[Jose Celestino (japc)]

You need to have google-api-python-client for this to work, else the gtasks backend will not appear.

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Jose is right. During the next release, should be backend packed separately as standalone packages with their own dependencies. It means that all dependencies will be solved by package manager.

Running gtg -d or scripts/debug.sh -d will tell you which modules you are missing.

There is my list of packages that I had to install on my machine:

sudo apt-get install python-oauth2 python-gflags python-gdata
# Special requirements:
# >= python-gdata 2.0.14 (accessible from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/oneiric/amd64/python-gdata/2.0.14-2 )

# Install this special package which is not part of ubuntu
sudo easy_install google-api-python-client

[Vasily Makarov (einmalfel)]

Many thanks for answers, my distro is Fedora14, but installation procedure in substance is same, now sync works well.

A propos, tomboy backend enabled with target to sync "all tasks" destroys all my tomboy notes - some was deleted, some has corrupted content. Fortunately, a have a backup.

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

It may sound a little bit rude but... are you able to reproduce that every time? I would like to ask to provide testing data (of course without any personal information) to repair those bug(s). If you have your backup, you could break it as often as it is needed. I would be happy, if you file a new bug for that! Thank you!

[Kentling (kent-rasmussen)]

Is this sync supposed to work two ways? I'm seeing my google tasks show up in GTG, but not the GTG tasks in Google task. I don't see any settings to control this; am i missing something?

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Kent > It is probably a bug, I am going to investigate it.

[Ian (ian-dalton)]

GTG only syncs with the default list of the gtasks backend.

[Pablo Saavedra (pablo-a-saavedra)]

Hi, any idea when this code will be released as part of official GTG?

Thanks.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

hi Pablo,

The future of this feature is very uncertain because Google Tasks lack a lot of the features we have in GTG and it doesn't degrade well. Also, we are not willing to spend too much time fixing bugs happening with a remote service which, anyway, degrade the user experience (we had a similar experience with RTM).

We are willing to invest more time in having our own online-service (but we need some help there) ;-)

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

Do we really want this one in 0.3 ?

[Izidor Matušov (izidor)]

Yes, I really want this feature in GTG 0.3 (To have at least one really useful synchronization service in GTG)

[Ishan Thilina Somasiri (ishanthilina)]

Hi all,

I too would love to have Google Tasks support in GTG and I am currently trying to implement it. I too agree with Sander's above comment on mapping Google tasklists and and GTG tags. Also implementing sub tasks too will be possible since Gtasks now supports sub tasks.

So I started working on that in https://code.launchpad.net/~ishanthilina/gtg/googleTasks . I cloned the branch from https://code.launchpad.net/~gtg-contributors/gtg/google_tasks . It only supported fetching tasks from a single tasklist. But I added the support to get the tasks from all the tasklists. But the problem is as soon as the tasks are retrieved, they get deleted :D. Anyway, I'm working on resolving that. I'm new to both Python and GTG. I'm slowly learning and doing experiments with the code. Any help, advice regarding my efforts will be highly appreciated.

[Wolter HV (wolterh)]

So has development of this stopped?

[Parin Porecha (parinporecha)]

Hi everyone,

I am a GSoC student this year. My project was to build a web application for GTG. The coding period is coming to an end, and I am happy to tell you that GTGOnline! ( thats the name of the web app ) is up and running. Here's the link to it - http://gtgonline-parinporecha.rhcloud.com/user/landing/ .
GTGOnline! supports current features of GTG + creating task trees ( You can create lists just like Gtasks ), Task sharing ( Add users to groups, and share task/s with them ). Please give it a couple of minutes, try out the features, and give a quick review

I ran madhuvishy's branch on my laptop, and found out that the sync with google tasks isn't working properly. Well there might be good news. As a part of the project, I've written a synchronization backend for GTGOnline!
If you are looking to sync tasks between GTGs on two Gnome machines, you can use this backend. For android users, I don't know if there's a way possible. But, if you know, do share it here !
btw, the gtasks backend isn't dead, and I'm looking into what can be done.

There's a small request -
Please review the sync backend. Here's the link to the branch - https://code.launchpad.net/~parinporecha/gtg/backend_gtgonline. You'll see a notification when the sync is over. Currently it is hardcoded, and based on your review, we can think of improving or removing it.
Please make sure you have a backup of all your tasks, because there still might be some bugs in the backend. But, I assure you it's state is better than the gtasks one. If you find any bugs, please mail me, I'll patch them ASAP :-)

Your feedback, suggestions are welcome. It'll only make GTGOnline! better.
Email - http://scr.im/nikobellic, or create a task with the feedback and share it with me right on the webapp !

[Kẏra (thekyriarchy)]

Reported on the github page: https://github.com/getting-things-gnome/gtg/issues/164

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

GTG project now moved to GitHub.
Marking Ubuntu task as "Invalid" to remove from default searches.