Master monday.com: Your First API Call Tutorial

Introduction

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the monday.com platform to enhance your team's productivity and improve workplace workflows. Without any further ado, let's dive in!

What is monday.com?

monday.com is a versatile work operating system (Work OS) that allows organizations to create custom workflow applications without the need for coding. This adaptive platform enables teams to shape workflows, run projects, and manage everyday tasks in a digital workspace. Some of the notable features of monday.com include:

Customizable workflow templates
Time tracking capabilities
Automations to reduce manual work
Data dashboards for insights and reporting
Seamless integrations with popular tools and applications

Recently, monday.com has rolled out a beta version of its AI assistant, which is poised to enhance user productivity and attract new users to the platform.

Understanding monday API & API Key

monday.com also enables users to build their own applications and share them in the marketplace, thanks to its API. Integrating external applications into your monday workspace can significantly tailor the experience to your needs.

To access the monday API, you will need to retrieve your API Key. This process is detailed in the monday.com documentation, and it’s advisable to follow the guidelines provided there.

Coding Preparations

Let’s begin by preparing your design and coding environment:

Create a directory for your application.
Set up a virtual environment.
Install the necessary libraries to work with the API.

Next, import the libraries you will need in your main application file. For this tutorial, we will set up a simple monday workspace to help facilitate our integrations. You can find more details on setting up your boards on monday.com.

Building monday API Integrations

Now it’s time to build your integrations! The goal here is to extract and insert necessary data into your boards. Start by defining some constants:

API_KEY = 'your_api_key_here'
API_URL = 'https://api.monday.com/v2'

You will also need to set up an authorization header for your API requests:

headers = { 'Authorization': API_KEY }

When working with the monday API, remember it utilizes GraphQL, which is a powerful and flexible query language.

Fetching Data from Your Board

To get started, you will need to execute a query to obtain your board's data. Here’s how:

query = '{ boards { id name } }'
response = requests.post(API_URL, json={'query': query}, headers=headers)

Once you have your board's information, you can proceed to extract the group and columns from it using the appropriate queries.

Inserting New Data into Your Board

After obtaining and setting up the necessary data, you will be ready to insert new items into your board. Pay close attention to the structure of the query, as it will differ from the data-fetching queries:

mutation = 'mutation { create_item (board_id: YOUR_BOARD_ID, item_name: "Your Item Name") { id } }'

After executing this mutation, you can verify your result to ensure that the data has been successfully integrated.

Conclusion

As demonstrated, working with the monday.com API is straightforward and well-documented, even if it differs from conventional REST API practices. If you're eager to practice using the monday API, consider joining a monday.com AI app hackathon. It is an excellent opportunity to enhance your skills and make the most of this powerful platform.