Monthly budgets for harvest: cronjob for rotating projects

harvest_monthly_budgets.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
'''
Harvest (www.getharvest.com) does not support setting monthly budgets for projects.
The recommended workaround is creating a new project every month. This script is
supposed to run on the first of every month and uses the Harvest API in order to
archive last month's projects and create new ones for the current month. Members
and tasks are automatically copied over to the new project.

Projects with monthly budgets need to fulfill two requirements:
    1. They need to have a budget set
    2. The name needs to end in "YYYY-MM", meaning year and month of the current 
       month. Example would be: "Website maintenance 2011-10".

An example crontab entry would be:

    0 1 1 * * USERNAME=info@jonasundderwolf.de PASSWORD=xyz /path/to/harvest_monthly_budgets.py

Uses the "requests" library (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests)
'''
import os
import re
import datetime
import json
import requests

AUTH = (os.environ['USERNAME'], os.environ['PASSWORD'])

today = datetime.date.today().replace(day=1)
month = today.strftime('%Y-%m')
# previous month
y, m = today.year, today.month
if m == 1: y -= 1; m = 12
else: m -= 1
today = today.replace(year=y, month=m)
prev_month = today.strftime('%Y-%m')

EXCLUDE_FIELDS = ('active_task_assignments_count', 'active_user_assignments_count', 'cache_version',
    'created_at', 'earliest_record_at', 'hint-earliest-record-at', 'hint-latest-record-at', 'id',
    'latest_record_at', 'name', 'updated_at')

kwargs = {
    'auth': AUTH,
    'headers': {
        'Accept': 'application/json',
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'},
}
base_url = 'https://jonasundderwolf.harvestapp.com/projects'
projects = json.load(requests.get(base_url, **kwargs))
for p in projects:
    project = p['project']
    if project['active'] and project['name'].endswith(prev_month) and (
            (project.get('budget') and float(project.get('budget'))) or
            (project.get('cost_budget') and float(project.get('cost_budget')))):
        print 'Copy project: %s' % project['name']
        pid = project['id']

        # create new project
        new_project = {
            'name': project['name'].replace(prev_month, month),
        }
        for field, value in project.items():
            if field not in EXCLUDE_FIELDS:
                new_project[field] = value

        print '> create new project: %s' % new_project['name']
        r = requests.post(base_url, data=json.dumps({'project': new_project}), **kwargs)
        if r.status_code != 201:
            print '>> Could not create new Project: %s' % r.read()
            continue
        # fetch new pid
        new_pid = re.findall('(\d+)$', r.headers['Location'])[0]

        # get user assignments
        r = requests.get('%s/%s/user_assignments' % (base_url, pid), **kwargs)
        users = json.loads(r.content)
        print '> Users:'
        for u in users:
            nu = {'user': {'id': u['user_assignment']['user_id']}}
            print '>> adding user: %s' % nu['user']['id']
            r = requests.post('%s/%s/user_assignments' % (base_url, new_pid), data=json.dumps(nu), **kwargs)
            if r.status_code != 201:
                print '>> Could not assign user %s to new Project' % u['user']['user_id']

        # get task assignments
        r = requests.get('%s/%s/task_assignments' % (base_url, pid), **kwargs)
        tasks = json.loads(r.content)
        print '> Tasks:'
        for t in tasks:
            nt = {'task': {'id': t['task_assignment']['task_id']}}
            print '>> adding task: %s' % nt['task']['id']
            r = requests.post('%s/%s/task_assignments' % (base_url, new_pid), data=json.dumps(nt), **kwargs)
            if r.status_code != 201:
                print '>> Could not assign user %s to new Project' % u['user']['user_id']

        # disable old project
        r = requests.put('%s/%s/toggle' % (base_url, pid), **kwargs)
        print '> diabling old project!'
        if r.status_code != 200:
           print '>> Could not toggle old project'

Hi,
I am using Harvest and i need this code to implement. However I am not known with Python script. Could you please help me to run this code to my Harvest. Where to start to do this. Please give me some direction.
Thanks,

@sujeetank You would not run this anywhere "in" harvest, this is completely external. You would put this on a POSIX computer that can run Python code, and it would use the network to control your Harvest account remotely.

This code relies on a service called "cron" to run the program (what appears above) on a regular schedule.
If you have access to a Linux server, here is a guide on using cron.

Not sure if it helps anyone, but I had to change line 48 to be:

response = requests.get(base_url, **kwargs)
projects = json.loads(response.text)

on line 68:

if r.status_code != 201:
  print '>> Could not create new Project: %s' % r.read()
continue

i'm getting the following error:

Copy project: Retainer 2017-07
> create new project: Retainer 2017-08
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "harvest_monthly_budgets.py", line 68, in <module>
    print '>> Could not create new Project: %s' % r.read()
AttributeError: 'Response' object has no attribute 'read'

I think it's since updating requests, but i tried to rollback to previous versions and the error persists - can you see why it would give this error?

Thanks,

Ash