Building your app

Developer Console

After you’ve gathered requirements and scoped your app, it’s time to start building. The first step is going to the developer console (which is called “My apps”) where you can create an OAuth app or generate a PAT in order to auth your first API request.

Developer tools

While you can jump into the API reference docs and start coding in favorite IDE, here are some tools, explained in more detail below, that make it easier to get started:

API explorer
Client libraries
Postman
Sandbox
Code examples

API explorer

There is an API explorer built into Asana’s API reference docs. This allows you to quickly and easily make API calls in your browser with real Asana data. Here are more details on how to use the API explorer.

Client libraries

Asana has client libraries in a handful of languages that make it quicker and easier to get started building apps with the API. The libraries abstract some of the more challenging aspects of development such as authentication and pagination. There are code examples for each library to help you get started.

The client libraries also help developers navigate API deprecations, which will help you avoid unexpected breaking changes and reduce the overall time required for maintenance.

Note that most client library functions are not documented. You need to check the lib/resources/gen folder of each library to see the built-in functions.

Postman

If you’re familiar with Postman or just prefer making API requests from your machine instead of the browser, you can use our Postman collection to interface with our API.

Developer Sandbox

In some cases, it can be helpful to use an Asana sandbox environment when developing custom apps. For example, if you’re making admin or domain-level API write requests, you may not want to use your company’s production Asana account to avoid making unintended changes to your domain.

Code examples

If you want to see more guides and examples, you can find links in the code examples section of the documentation.