Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Notion API – public beta

developers.notion.so

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 262 posts

Re: Notion API – public beta

#61

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

orliesaurus wrote: post #21

Full Disclosure - I have been lucky enough to have closed BETA access to the Notion API and here are some things I have noticed. BTW I do not work for Notion, im totally indie :P - The team building the API has been super responsive and respectful, very good collaboration on their Dev slack and I had a great time testing things - The documentation has been updated with the feedback from the community who had access,…

I've also found them to be pretty responsive (I've messaged them a number of times with bug reports and feature requests). That really contributes to my overall appreciation of the product!

Re: Notion API – public beta

#62

Post by RunawayGalaxy »

awill wrote: post #49

How good is Notion? Is the lock-in worth it? I'm fearful of lock-in, and just use markdown plain text, sync'd with dropbox, and then use different markdown apps on different OSes.

imho The primary value is their pared-down databases that mostly just work like you want them to.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#63

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

shubhamjain wrote: post #32

I have been using Notion in its API form for a while through notion-py[1]. Currently, it powers my blog[2] and for me, it's a really good integration. I write something, ask my friends to review it. I run a command to publish it, and it's live. The workflow is really, really good and removes a ton of friction because the software that you write in is also the one that powers your blog's content. Overall, I think Noti…

I am interested in running my blog with Notion. I currently use a Gatsby blog on Netlify using NetlifyCMS. So I'd need to export any entries to Markdown and commit them to the blog's repo (the rest is handled by Netlify). I'd ideally like it to be bidirectional though, so that any changes to files in the repo are going to be reflected in Notion...

Re: Notion API – public beta

#64

Post by MattRix »

wpietri wrote: post #47
owlbynight wrote: post #12

When I initially signed up for Notion, I did so thinking the API was already usable. It was used as a selling point for their premium service even though it wasn't implemented. This was a year and a half ago or so. I felt pretty burned by it and killed my subscription. Hopefully this turns out well for the people who've been waiting for it, but that experience left a terrible taste in my mouth.

For those like myself ignorant about the company, Notion appears to be a project management tool with integrated wiki and docs support. With at least a claimed strong user focus.

Yup, that’s how they present it, though in reality it’s pretty clunky as a project management tool, and you’d almost always be better off using a purpose-built solution.

Notion makes a decent tool for a personal/organizational wiki but it’s too slow/unresponsive/janky to use for many other purposes IMO.

I’ve been using it for a couple years and I used to hold out hope that the performance could be optimized, but at this point I think it must be some fundamental issue with their tech stack (or some other organizational issue). It just feels bad to use. The pages take forever to load, the search is slow, and the actual page editing feels sluggish.

It’s a shame because otherwise I really like the core ideas of how Notion works. If someone released a tool that was “Notion but fast”, I’d switch in an instant.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#65

Post by imwillofficial »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #44

It really irks me when the pricing page for any product has any tier that requires contacting "Sales". If you don't want to include pricing for a tier, exclude it from the pricing list or add a "need something else" or "we also offer enterprise plans" after the table. Maybe just a me thing, because I'm guessing it obviously works based on how often I've come across it.

Seems reasonable enough to me. At a certain scale giving a price is meaningless because there are tons more factors that go into the cost.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#67

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #44

It really irks me when the pricing page for any product has any tier that requires contacting "Sales". If you don't want to include pricing for a tier, exclude it from the pricing list or add a "need something else" or "we also offer enterprise plans" after the table. Maybe just a me thing, because I'm guessing it obviously works based on how often I've come across it.

The reason pricing is not shown for that tier (in most cases, I can't say for sure for Notion) is because it's not a normal tier, it includes the possibilities of negotiated pricing and custom setups. Why does it bother you?

Re: Notion API – public beta

#68

Post by InitialLastName »

barbazoo wrote: post #66

For anyone looking for a open source notes app that let's you keep control of your data, have a look at https://joplinapp.org/ .

The biggest thing I'm trying to replace as I move off of Notion is the dynamic lists embedded in notes. I couldn't tell but that doesn't seem like a thing in Joplin; am I missing something?

Re: Notion API – public beta

#70

Post by spullara »

jitl wrote: post #25
spullara wrote: post #15

Who makes a database API with no way to change records in the database?

You can update the properties of a page in a database using a PATCH request to v1/pages, details here: https://developers.notion.com/reference/patch-page (I work at Notion, but not on the API team)

Yeah, I found that later. Still seems odd there isn't a direct API for it.
Post reply on HN