The CurdBee Weekly #1

Hello CurdBee users, and welcome to the first ever CurdBee Weekly. In this weekly blog post from the development team, you’ll have news from the frontlines as we continue to work on your favourite online invoicing application.

With plenty of cool information, and a healthy dose of bad puns, we hope that this maiden issue of the CBW goes down well with you guys. As always, if you’ve got something to say, we’d love to hear it – mail us at [email protected]!

Can you say A-P-I?

Let’s face it – we’ve been bragging about the API for a while now. Apart from giving you little sneak peeks via teaser articles and screenshots though, we didn’t tell you much about it until we made our official API release last week. In this weekly, we’re now prepared to get real, and real with Ruby, no less.

It’s no secret that we love the language. CurdBee is written in it, and many of our devs are vocal proponents of the language and contribute heavily to the community around it. Follow the tutorial below as CurdBee’s Lead Developer Lakshan leads you through the process of using the CurdBee API’s brand-spanking-new Ruby gem.

To install the gem, just run

sudo gem install curdbee

Then you can start accessing your invoice data from an IRB (interactive shell) or your existing Ruby apps.

Here’s a little snippet that will retrieve your 10 most recent invoices and display each invoice’s due amount and state as well.

require 'curdbee'

# set the API key and subdomain for your account.
CurdBee::Config.api_key = "Your API Key"
CurdBee::Config.subdomain = "Your Subdomain"

@invoices = CurdBee::Invoice.list

@invoices.each do |invoice|
  puts "#{invoice.date}  #{invoice.total_due}  #{invoice.state}"
end

It’s simple, but works – much like CurdBee itself. So, what can you do with it? Get started, of course. Once you’re done playing with this snippet though, be sure to head over to our API documentation section and have a look at all the other cool stuff you can do with it.

Want to create an app that tweets rude reminders thank you notes to clients that have not paid up in a while upon receiving a payment? How about a script that will listen for payments and then automatically buy gummy candy with the amount received? The possibilities are endless, and as you get hacking we hope that you’ll keep us updated on your progress as well.

Bee Supported – Enable Push Notifications

In case you missed this new support article, you can now receive CurdBee notifications on your desktop and mobile device.

Our Push Notification service is available as a free add-on module for all CurdBee Pro users. To use Push Notifications you will first need to upgrade to Pro and then enable the Push Notifications Module by visiting the Settings > Upgrade & Extend page inside your account. [Go to article]

Hive Mind

The buzz in the CurdBee universe always interests us, and we’re here this week to give you a small taste of what users like you are saying about the Bee. Read on for a not-so-subtle brag.
First off, we were featured in 40 tech’s 10 Useful Online Tools for Business article. We enjoyed the read and were excited to see the Bee up there! Thanks you for considering us, @chilyn, and we hope you continue to enjoy using CurdBee.

Moving on, here is what the Twitter kids are saying about us these days.

daleclay @curdbee Thanks for the brilliant push notification feature! You guys rock!

justinmueller Looks like CurdBee is a fun billing tool. Going to give it a go for my next freelance project.

gracesmith Gotta say I’m lovin the new UI tweaks on @curdbee. Making it much slicker & more intuitive, meaning it’s still my invoicing app of choice :)

Beekeepers

They keep the servings running and the code ticking, they envision the roadmap and stick to it, delivering new features, providing support and keeping you up to date on everything CurdBee. This part of the CurdBee Weekly focuses on the team behind the app, and in this maiden issue we’re going to talk about the Poya Day.

Poya is a monthly national holiday in Sri Lanka, and apart from being important to Buddhists worldwide, a few select Poya holidays are also very important to Vesess and the CurdBee team for one special reason – we do most of our feature released on such days.

Why? No, it’s not because we’re superstitious. It’s because in Sri Lanka, a Poya Day means a lot of things –

• Less traffic – being a national holiday, the roads empty, and getting to and from office, and to and from our usual celebratory lunch is a piece of cake.
• Faster Internets – with everyone at home, and the majority of workplaces closed, the series of tubes is mostly clear, and data flows freely.

Release day is a fun but stressful day for us. What with code to migrate and documentation to make live, giving the old Bee a shot in the arm is a process we take very seriously. Having less traffic, both IRL and online makes it easier for us to get our job done, and done well at that.

So, once every few months, while the majority of Sri Lankans are snoozing or watching bad television, we meetup to extend your online invoicing experience. Then, after a day of SSHing, FTPing and LOLing at the assorted links we pass around while we wait for files to transfer and changes to sync, we head out to one of the few open Indian cafes and have Thosai and plain tea. A perfect end to a (usually) perfect upgrade process in which you guys get new features and we get nice food and hot tea. A good deal, if we say so ourselves!