Better 30 Boxes Event Creation from Quicksilver

While I was on a roll creating AppleScripts for APIs, I decided to work on deciphering the 30 Boxes API. The 30 Boxes calendar lets you send it an email to post an event, and the format for creating a 30 Boxes event is a bit more flexible than the Backpack calendar, especially since it allows you to specify the reminder time while entering the event. So you could type something like:

Wednesday 3pm Do some stuff remind in 30 minutes (note about event)

Part of the reason I stopped using 30 Boxes was that I was tired of the multi-step process required to create these events using Quicksilver (the same reason I created some of my Backpack scripts). While only three steps, having to remember the additional step when creating an event greatly increases the barrier to getting this procedure into muscle memory.

What was required was calling up Quicksilver, typing the text, selecting the direct email function, and selecting 30 Boxes (after first creating 30 Boxes as a contact in your Address Book). While the setup was simple, I wanted fewer steps for each time I entered an event.

So, I’ve created a script (I zipped it this time to make it download better) to lower the number of required steps. With this script, you will be able to type the event using the syntax as mentioned above, and then call the script. Like all my other scripts, it sends a response back to Quicksilver making it activate again, which adds another step; this step, however, doesn’t add as much to the brain work necessary, as deactivating Quicksilver is already second nature to most Quicksilver users.

You will need to modify a couple of things in this script to use it, and the steps to get these keys is a little obtuse:

1. Login to your 30 Boxes calendar, if you haven’t already.

2. Visit this link.

3. You will see an example url here that contains the two pieces of information you’re going to need, and the url is handily split up into multiple lines to make it easier to grab those two pieces of information.

The first one you’ll need is in the line that starts with “&apiKey=”. Get everything in that line after the equals sign, and replace the text YOURAPIKEY in the script with that. Do the same with the line that starts with “&authorizedUserToken=” and replace YOURAUTHORIZEDUSERTOKEN in the script with that.

Save it in your ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions folder and restart Quicksilver. Enjoy easier event creation with 30 Boxes and Quicksilver.