TrelloNewsletter

The Trello Newsletter gem is inspired by the Changelog's Trello as a CMS blog post. The gem converts cards in a Trello board into a HTML newsletter which is sent to Mailchimp ready to be sent out.

It's currently specific to Code Newbie but there will be steps to make it more accessible to everyone.

Usage

Required gems

This project will need the bundler gem installed. To install bundler, copy the following command into terminal:

$ gem install bundler

Install Gem

Clone the gem into your directory, with ssh:

$ git clone [email protected]:code-newbies/trello_newsletter.git

Or without ssh (you'll need to enter in your GitHub login details):

$ git clone https://github.com/code-newbies/trello_newsletter.git

Updating the Project

Updates to the project will be done in the master branch. It is recommended to run a git pull command from your terminal to make sure your local copy of the project is updated. The steps are:

$ git checkout master

This command ensures you're working in the master branch

$ git pull origin master

This command will update your local repo.

Set API Keys

Next is setting up your environment variables. Your environment variables will store your secret API key's. We need two sets of API key's to get this working; Trello and Mailchimp.

Trello key

We use the ruby-trello gem and these instructions are appropriated from that project.

1. Login to your Trello account.
2. Get your api key from trello.com/app-key. Click 'allow' when you get to this page. Set it as environment variable 'TRELLO_DEVELOPER_PUBLIC_KEY'. To do this enter this command in your terminal:

$ export TRELLO_DEVELOPER_PUBLIC_KEY=YOURAPIKEY

3. (optional) To make sure that this is loaded every time you start a new terminal session. You can place this command in ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile.

To make sure that this is loaded every time you start a new terminal session. You can place this command in ~/.profile. You can check to see if your environment variable is set by typing this command into your terminal:

$ env

This will output all your environment variables that you have set. Just search for TRELLO_DEVELOPER_PUBLIC_KEY to make sure that it is all set.

4. Get your member token by visiting this url: https://trello.com/1/authorize?key=YOURAPIKEY&response_type=token&expiration=never

• key: Your api key, copy and paste the key you got above.
• response_type: 'token'
• expiration: 'never' if you want your token to never expire (which is what we want). If you leave this blank the token generated will expire in 30 days.

Set the member token to an environment variable called 'TRELLO_MEMBER_TOKEN' using the process in step 1.

Mailchimp key

1. Login to Mailchimp.
2. Navigate to 'Account' >> 'Extras' in Mailchimp.
3. Under 'Extras' menu there is an 'Api Keys' option.
4. On that page under the 'Your API keys' heading you have an option to create a new key. Set the key value generated to an environment variable named 'MAILCHIMP_KEY'. Like with the Trello key, enter this command in your terminal:

$ export MAILCHIMP_KEY=YOURAPIKEY

Again to make sure that this key is loaded every time you start a new terminal session. You can place this command in ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile.

Generate newsletter

Once we have both the Mailchimp and Trello Api keys we can go ahead and generate the newsletter.

1. Navigate to the Trello_newsletter project, which you would have cloned in the earlier step.
2. bundle install --without test to install any dependencies.
3. Run rake generate.

This rake task will do two things:

• Generate your email HTML file using information from the Trello board. This zip file will be placed in your project root folder.
• Zip the file (and a header_image.png if included) and then send it to Mailchimp.

To see the newsletter in Mailchimp:

1. Log in to Mailchimp.
2. Click on Campaigns.
3. You should see your generated template saved as a draft.

Contributing

1. Fork it by pressing that GitHub fork button at the top of the page.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request