Calendar events and emails as a SQL database using Nylas

#devchallenge #nylaschallenge #api #nylas

This is a submission for the Nylas Challenge: Galaxy Brain.

What I Built and Why

You probably know SQL for relational databases. But what if you could use it to manage your emails and calendar events? That's what I wanted to explore.
It's a bit strange, but actually, it's fun and useful.

Anyquery is a SQL query engine. I created a plugin for it with Go to make it compatible with Nylas, allowing anyone to manage their emails and events with SQL.

My main motivation was bulk editing. Let's say I was wrong on the location of a recurrent event. I would need to modify each event location. Using SQL, I can just do

UPDATE nylas_events 
SET location = 'Eiffel tower` 
WHERE title = 'Dentist';

Moreover, imagine that I have to send bulk emails to my customers. I can just do

INSERT INTO nylas_emails("to", body, subject) 
SELECT email, 'New version 0.3.1', 'Discover the update' 
FROM my_customers;

Or export my 10 next upcoming events to JSON

anyquery -q "SELECT * FROM nylas_events WHERE start_at >= date()" --json

SQL is a very powerful language and this plugin opens a new world of possibility.

Demo

I have recorded a little demo where I show you:

How to query your calendar events
How to add an event using an INSERT INTO statement
How to update an event using an UPDATE statement
How to delete an event using a DELETE statement
How to list your unread emails using a SELECT statement
How to send an email using an INSERT INTO statement
How to trash emails using a DELETE statement

I'm using TablePlus as the SQL IDE, and Anyquery in MySQL mode to run the plugin I made.

Code

As plugins are required to be in the main repository of anyquery, the plugin I built is available in the plugins/nylas directory, and with an MIT License
https://github.com/julien040/anyquery/tree/main/plugins/nylas

You can install it by running anyquery install nylas. You'll need anyquery installed, and a Nylas sandbox account set up with a grant ID and an API key.

My Journey

The Nylas APIs were of great help to query and modify data from different calendar/email providers. I'm particularly proud of the seamless integration with the SQL query engine.
While this project is a submission for the hackathon, I'm pretty sure I'll use it weekly, and others might too. Managing productivity tools with a declarative language is an efficient and effective approach.