WHAT IS THIS?

This is meant to help people (like me) that use both Hamster applet (Gnome Time Tracker) and Redmine to keep trace of activities done.

See also https://github.com/brunetton/GitlabTimesync for the same script using Gitlab

PREREQUISITES

• Redmine >= v1.1
• Redmine API Key (see below)
• Python installed your local machine

INSTALLATION

Install needed Python packages

Using Pypi :

pip install docopt
pip install moment
pip install python-redmine
pip install pyyaml

Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:brunetton/redminetimesync.git

Prepare config files

Copy redminetimesync.config.tpl to redminetimesync.config : it's an INI-like file that needs two parameters:

• url: your Redmine public url
• key: your Redmine API key

nb: you can find your API key on your Redmine account page (/my/account) when logged in, on the right-hand pane of the default layout. You'll have to enable Redmine REST API in Administration -> Settings -> Authentication

You can also use an user/password to login but it will ask you for the password each time it tries to sync your activities. To do so, you need to add the following to the config file:

• auth_type: password
• user: your username

USAGE

1. Log some activities in Hamster, precising Redmine issues IDs. Valid formats are :

• #134: Adding some interesting stuff
• Fix #243
• Adding logging output (#132)

2. run the python script: redminetimesync.py

• to sync one day, just give the date to the script : redminetimesync.py 10/10/13
• to sync a period, use from and to arguments : redminetimesync.py from 10/10/13 to 15/10/13
  • -> to sync from a given date until today, you don't need to precise to parameter : redminetimesync.py from 10/10/14

You can configure dates formats in redminetimesync.config file.

Note that all dates parameters can be also replaced by "days ago" parameters :

• redminetimesync.py 1 will sync yesterday work
• redminetimesync.py from 7 will sync last week work (from 7 days ago to today)
• redminetimesync.py from 15 to 7 will sync week before last week work (from 15 days ago to last week)

ADVANCED CONFIGURATION

Activities

Activities are defined in activities.config file. You can copy sample file activities.config.tpl (and rename it) and adjust it for your needs.

Default activity

When adding times in Redmine, default activity is associated with time entry, if a default activity is defined. If there is no default activity defined in Redmine, the script will raise an error (because you're trying to add a new time entry with no activity associated). There are two workarounds :

• define a default one in Redmine by editing it and make it default (see Redmine wiki)
• define a default one in redminetimesync.config file. Example : redmine_default_activity_id: 9 # Development (see paragraph below)

Getting Redmine activities Ids

By default, two activities are created when installing Redmine :

• development
• design

Development id is 9. You can add custom ones.

• from Redmine v2.2, it's possible to use Redmine Rest API to get activities list. You can use list_activities.py located in the tools folder to get that list.
• before Redmine v2.2, to get an activity ID, you can check that page on your redmine install : /redmine/enumerations if you have admin rights (activities IDs are in the urls of edit links); or use guess_redmine_activities_ids.py located in the tools folder.

Link Hamster's categories to Redmine activities

If you need to report on Redmine more than one activity, you can edit activities.config file and associate Hamster categories names to Redmine activities IDs. For example :

# Development (default in all Redmine installations)
Dev: 9
# Custom activities
Project management: 13
# Project managment
Phone: 14
Customer email: 14

With this conf, if the script encounter a Hamster time entry named "#123 : adding API key to make redminetimesync usable" associated with Phone category in Hamster, a new time entry for task #123 with activity number 14 will be created.

Hints

• in Hamster, you can precise category directly while entering activity description. For example : Answering the phone (#34) @phone Will associate that entry to the "phone" category in Hamster