# Using Code with Notion: A Getting Started Guide This guide provides an overview of how you can leverage code to interact with your Notion workspace, based on the capabilities of the Notion API. ## 1. Understanding the Notion API The Notion API is your gateway to programmatically interacting with your workspace. It's built on standard HTTP requests, making it accessible from any programming language. Here’s what you can do with it: * **Read, create, and update pages and databases:** * **Pages:** You can create new pages, either empty or from a template. You can append content blocks to pages, such as text, headings, to-do lists, images, and more. You can also retrieve the content of any page your integration has access to. * **Databases:** Databases are a core feature of Notion, and the API gives you full control. You can query databases with filters and sorting to find specific entries. You can create new entries (which are just pages with properties) and update the properties of existing entries (like changing the status of a task from "In Progress" to "Done"). * **Build powerful integrations:** This is where the magic happens. You can connect Notion to other services you use. For example: * **Syncing:** Keep your Notion task list in sync with your Google Calendar or Todoist. * **Notifications:** Send a Slack notification when a page in a specific Notion database is updated. * **Data import/export:** Create scripts to import data from CSV files into a Notion database or export Notion data for analysis in other tools. * **Create custom tools and workflows:** * **Headless CMS:** Use a Notion database to manage content for your blog, portfolio, or website. Your website's frontend (built with something like React, Vue, or Next.js) can fetch the content from Notion via the API and display it. This lets you use Notion's powerful editor to write your content. * **Personal Dashboards:** Build a custom web application that pulls data from various Notion pages and databases to create a personalized dashboard with charts, summaries, and reports. ## 2. How to Get Started Getting started with the Notion API involves a few straightforward steps: 1. **Create a Notion Integration:** * Go to [www.notion.so/my-integrations](https://www.notion.so/my-integrations). * Click "New integration". * Give it a name and associate it with a workspace. * Once created, you'll get an **"Internal Integration Token"**. This is your API key. Keep it secret and secure! 2. **Share Your Pages/Databases with the Integration:** * For your integration to access a page or a database, you must explicitly share it. * Go to the page or database in Notion, click the "Share" button in the top right, then "Invite". * You'll see your newly created integration in the list. Select it and give it "Can edit" permissions if you want to write data. 3. **Use an SDK (Software Development Kit):** * You can make raw HTTP requests to the Notion API, but using an SDK makes it much easier. * **JavaScript/TypeScript (Official):** The `@notionhq/client` is the official library. You can install it via npm: `npm install @notionhq/client`. * **Python (Community):** `notion-client` is a popular and well-maintained library. Install it with pip: `pip install notion-client`. * Other languages have community-supported libraries as well. ## 3. Project Ideas & Use Cases Here are a few concrete ideas to get your imagination going: * **Automated Meeting Notes:** Create a script that, when run, creates a new meeting notes page in Notion from a predefined template and pre-fills it with the date, attendees (perhaps from a calendar event), and an agenda. * **Habit Tracker Sync:** If you use a mobile habit-tracking app with an API, you could write a service that syncs your daily completions to a Notion database for long-term tracking and analysis. * **Website Content Management:** As mentioned, this is a very popular use case. You can create a database for blog posts with properties like `Title`, `Slug`, `Status` (Draft, Published), `Published Date`, and `Tags`. Your website code would query this database for all posts where `Status` is "Published" and generate a page for each one. * **Personal Finance Dashboard:** Connect to your bank's API (using a service like Plaid) and have a script that runs daily to pull new transactions and add them to a "Finances" database in Notion. ## 4. Next Steps & Resources Ready to start building? Here are the most important links: * **Official Notion API Documentation:** [https://developers.notion.com](https://developers.notion.com) - This is your primary resource. It has detailed information on every endpoint, object type, and capability. * **Official JavaScript SDK:** [https://github.com/makenotion/notion-sdk-js](https://github.com/makenotion/notion-sdk-js) * **Python `notion-client` Library:** [https://github.com/ramnes/notion-client](https://github.com/ramnes/notion-client) * **Community & Tutorials:** Search on YouTube, dev.to, or Medium for "Notion API tutorial". You'll find many step-by-step guides for specific projects. # notion