Taskmapper

Taskmapper is a Gem which eases communication with various project and ticket management systems by providing a consistent Ruby API.

Taskmapper let's you "remap" a system into the consistent Taskmapper API, easily. For instance the description of an issue/ticket, might be named description in one system, and problem-description somewhere else. Via Taskmapper, this would always be called description. The Taskmapper remaps makes it easy for you to integrate different kinds of ticket systems, into your own system. You don't have to take care of all the different kinds of systems, and their different APIs. Taskmapper handles all this for you, so you can focus on making your application awesome.

Installation

Taskmapper is a Gem, so we can easily install it by using RubyGems:

gem install taskmapper

Taskmapper depends on Hashie, which is an amazing library which makes converting objects to hashes, and the other way around, a joy. It should be installed automatically whenever installing taskmapper.

Finding and installing a provider

Taskmapper by itself won't do too much. You may want to install a provider, to retrieve a list of available providers issue the following command:

gem search taskmapper

You could then install for instance taskmapper-pivotal:

gem install taskmapper-pivotal

Usage

Note: The API may change, and the following may not be the final. Please keep yourself updated before you upgrade.

First, we instance a new class with the right set of options. In this example, we are authenticating with Pivotal Tracker.

pivotal = taskmapper.new(:pivotal, {:username => "john", :password => "seekrit"})

Grabbing a project

Now that we've got out Taskmapper instance, let's go ahead and grab "testproject":

project = pivotal.project["testproject"]
    #=> TaskMapper::Project<#name="testproject"..>

Project#[] is an alias to Project#find:

project = pivotal.project.find "testproject"
    #=> TaskMapper::Project<#name="testproject"..>

Which translates into:

project = pivotal.project.find :name => "testproject"
    #=> TaskMapper::Project<#name="testproject"..>

That means you can actually look up a project by something else than the title, like the owner:

project = pivotal.project.find :owner => "Sirupsen"
    #=> TaskMapper::Project<#owner="sirupsen"..>

To retrieve all projects, simply pass no argument to find:

project = pivotal.project.find
    #=> [TaskMapper::Project<#..>,TaskMapper::Project<#..>,..]

Creating a ticket

Now that we grabbed the right project. Let's go ahead and create a ticket at this project:

project.ticket!(:title => "Test", :description => "Hello World")

We create our ticket with three properties.

Finding tickets

Alright, let's play with the projects tickets! Here we grab the ticket with the id of 22:

ticket = project.tickets(:id => 22)
    #=> TaskMapper::Ticket<#id=22..>

Like with projects, we can also find tickets by other attributes, like title, priority and so on, with tickets we do not use a find method though. Also as with projects, if no argument is passed, all tickets are retrieved:

tickets = project.tickets
    #=> [TaskMapper::Ticket<#..>,TaskMapper::Ticket<#..>,..]

Changing ticket attributes

Let's say that we're working on this ticket right now, so let's go ahead and change the status to reflect that:

ticket.status = :in_progress

Other valid ticket statuses include:

:closed, :accepted, :resolved

For the sake of example, we'll change the description as well, and then save the ticket.

ticket.description = "Changed description to something else!"
ticket.save

Closing a ticket

The issue was solved, let's make that official by closing the ticket with the appropriate resolution:

ticket.close(:resolution => "fixed", :description => "Fixed issue by doing x")

Note that you could close the ticket by changing all the attributes manually, like so:

ticket.status = :closed
ticket.resolution = "fixed"
ticket.resolution_description = "Fixed issue by doing x"
ticket.save

However, as closing a ticket with a resolution is such a common task, the other method is included because it may be more convenient.

Support

Currently Taskmapper supports the following systems:

Pivotal Tracker

To use Pivotal Tracker with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-pivotal

Then simply require it, and you are good to use Pivotal Tracker with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-pivotal'
unfuddle = taskmapper.new(:pivotal, {:username => "..", :password => ".."})

The source code is located at taskmapper-pivotal

Lighthouse

To use Lighthouse with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-lighthouse

Then simply require it, and you are all set to use Lighthouse with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-lighthouse'
lighthouse = taskmapper.new(:lighthouse, {:username => "..", :password => ".."})

The source code is located at taskmapper-lighthouse

Basecamp

To use Basecamp with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-basecamp

Once you require it, then you are ready to use Basecamp with Taskmapper

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-basecamp'
basecamp = taskmapper.new(:basecamp, :domain => 'yourdomain.basecamphq.com', :username => 'you', :password => 'pass')

The source code is located at taskmapper-basecamp

Github

To use Github Issue tracking with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-github

Once you require it, then you are ready to use Github and Taskmapper

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-github'
github = taskmapper.new(:github, :username => 'you', :password => 'pass')

The source code is located at taskmapper-github

Unfuddle

To use Unfuddle with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-unfuddle

Then simply require it, and you are good to use Unfuddle with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-unfuddle'
unfuddle = taskmapper.new(:unfuddle, {:username => "..", :password => "..", :account => ".."})

The source code is located at taskmapper-unfuddle

Kanbanpad

To use Kanbanpad with taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-kanbanpad

Once you require it, you can connect to Kanbanpad using Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-kanbanpad'
kanbanpad = taskmapper.new(:kanbanpad, {:username => "xx", :password => "xx"})

The source code is located at taskmapper-kanbanpad

Redmine

To use Redmine with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-redmine

Just require it, and you are ready to use Redmine with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-redmine'
redmine = taskmapper.new(:redmine, {:username => "..", :password => "..", :server => ".."})

The source code is located at taskmapper-redmine

Trac

To use Trac with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-trac

Require it, and you are happening to call Trac with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-trac'
trac = taskmapper.new(:trac, {:username => "..", :password => "..", :url => ".."})

The source code is located at taskmapper-trac

Bugzilla

To use Bugzilla with Taskmapper, install it: gem install taskmapper-bugzilla

Require and you can talk to Bugzilla with Taskmapper!

require 'taskmapper'
require 'taskmapper-bugzilla'
codaset = taskmapper.new(:bugzilla, {:username => "foo", :password => "bar", :url => "https://bugzilla.mozilla.org"})

The source code is located at taskmapper-bugzilla

Taskmapper CLI

For the full documentation on the CLI taskmapper-cli

Installing the CLI

gem install taskmapper-cli

Creating a provider

Creating a provider consists of three steps:

Run the generator like this: tm generate --provider-name='myprovider'
Implement whatever is needed to connect to your desired backend
Release it to RubyGems

Create the Taskmapper provider

Thanks to a simple generator, it is easy to get started with a new provider. Run this from the command line: tm generate --provider-name='myprovider'

This will generate a new skeleton provider called taskmapper-myprovider in the current directory. Create a repo from that directory, and you can start implementing your provider.

Almost all APIs are different. And so are their Ruby providers. Taskmapper attempts to create an universal API for ticket and project management systems, and thus, we need to map the functionality to the Taskmapper API. This is the providers job. The provider is the glue between Taskmapper, and the task management system's API. Usually, your provider would rely on another library for the raw HTTP interaction. For instance, taskmapper-lighthouse relies on ActiveResource in order to interact with the Lighthouse API. Look at it like this:

Taskmapper -> Provider -> (Ruby library) -> Site's API

Provider being the glue between the site's API and Taskmapper. The Ruby library is "optional" (though highly recommended as mentioned), therefore it is in parantheses.

An example of a provider could be taskmapper-lighthouse, an example of a Ruby library could be ActiveResource.

For now, look at taskmapper-lighthouse as an example on how to create a provider. More detailed documentation will be available soon.

Release it

Simply release it to RubyGems.org, the name of the provider Gem should follow this simple naming rule:

taskmapper-<provider's name>

For instance if you set for a Github provider, it would be named:

taskmapper-github

This makes it easy for people to find providers, simply by issuing:

gem search -r taskmapper

They should be presented with a nice list of all available providers.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so we don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself so we can ignore when we pull)
Send us a pull request. Bonus points for feature branches.