Add Tasks by Text through Gmail's API

I manage my tasks from my desktop, but it would be nice to add new tasks on my phone, out in the wild, as I think of them.

Taskserver

I tried getting through the taskserver tutorials, I really did, but it ended up taking too much effort to try and figure it all out. I don't even need a fully synced server setup anyway, I just want to be able to add a few tasks from my phone every now and then.

I decided to try MacGyvering a solution for myself.

Text

I recently found out one can send a text to an email address. I'm already in the habit of writing notes to myself by texting my own number. It wouldn't be much of a mental shift to start texting tasks to myself in a similar fashion.

Contact

I'll be sending these texts to a subaddressed version of my own email address. I've created a new contact in my phone, named Task Add, and gave it an email address of

myemail+taskadd@email.com

All of my new tasks will be sent to this contact.

Format

Every text consists of one or more lines of text.
The first line of text describes the task to be added.
a few Modification types can be placed anywhere on the first line without disrupting the description.
- Tags start with "+"
- Project starts with "pro:"
- Priority starts with "pri:"
Annotations will be added for every additional line of text.

Examples:

testing tags +tag +youreit

complex item pri:H pro:important.project +doitnow  
it has an annotation

mixing a few +chaotic things together proj:testing to see if it works pri:m

Gmail

Filters & Labels

I'm using Gmail's filters to mark each task with two labels: a permanent "taskadd", and a temporary "tasknotread". Two filters need to be created, because gmail is only capable of adding a single label per filter.

From: myphonenumber@sms.provider.net
To: myemail+addtask@email.com
AddLabel "**taskadd**"

From: myphonenumber@sms.provider.net
To: myemail+addtask@email.com
AddLabel "**tasknotread**"

Pro Tip: Send a test text from your phone number if you need to see its email address.

API

There are a few things that need to be done before using the Gmail API with python.

I saved my credentials right in the hooks folder. I wasn't sure where I should be saving it, so why not make it convenient for my code to access.

Taskwarrior

I created a new hook file in .task/hooks, ensured its name starts with "on-launch", and made it executable.

touch ~/.task/hooks/on-launch.gmailtaskadd
chmod +x ~/.task/hooks/on-launch.gmailtaskadd

Read more here: Hook Author's Guide

General Code Flow

find reasons not to run code
- code is already running
- code ran too recently
- no internet
connect with gmail resource
- get credentials authorized with sign-in
- store authorization in token for later
get messages labeled taskadd and tasknotread
- our initial query gives us a list of message ids
- we use these ids to get the full message data
parse messages into tasks
- tokenize first line of message
- filter out modification tokens
- the remaining tokens are the description
- any additional lines are annotations
bash tasks into taskwarrior
- run each part of the message through shlex.quote()
- combine the sanitized parts into a bash script
- run bash script through a subprocess shell
clean up inbox and settings
- remove tasknotread label
- remove message from inbox
- reset flags and timers

Reminder: You can back up your task library by making a copy of the .task directory!

Goto line 24 and update the filepath to your own credentials file.

MZAWeb/gmailtaskadd