Calendar events and emails as a SQL database using Nylas

This is a submission for the Nylas Challenge: Galaxy Brain.

What I Built and Why

You probably know SQL for relational databases. But what if you could use it to manage your emails and calendar events? That's what I wanted to explore.
It's a bit strange, but actually, it's fun and useful.

Anyquery is a SQL query engine. I created a plugin for it with Go to make it compatible with Nylas, allowing anyone to manage their emails and events with SQL.

My main motivation was bulk editing. Let's say I was wrong on the location of a recurrent event. I would need to modify each event location. Using SQL, I can just do

UPDATE nylas_events 
SET location = 'Eiffel tower` 
WHERE title = 'Dentist';

Moreover, imagine that I have to send bulk emails to my customers. I can just do

INSERT INTO nylas_emails("to", body, subject) 
SELECT email, 'New version 0.3.1', 'Discover the update' 
FROM my_customers;

Or export my 10 next upcoming events to JSON

anyquery -q "SELECT * FROM nylas_events WHERE start_at >= date()" --json

SQL is a very powerful language and this plugin opens a new world of possibility.

Demo

I have recorded a little demo where I show you:

• How to query your calendar events
• How to add an event using an INSERT INTO statement
• How to update an event using an UPDATE statement
• How to delete an event using a DELETE statement
• How to list your unread emails using a SELECT statement
• How to send an email using an INSERT INTO statement
• How to trash emails using a DELETE statement

I'm using TablePlus as the SQL IDE, and Anyquery in MySQL mode to run the plugin I made.

Code

As plugins are required to be in the main repository of anyquery, the plugin I built is available in the plugins/nylas directory, and with an MIT License
https://github.com/julien040/anyquery/tree/main/plugins/nylas

You can install it by running anyquery install nylas. You'll need anyquery installed, and a Nylas sandbox account set up with a grant ID and an API key.

My Journey

The Nylas APIs were of great help to query and modify data from different calendar/email providers. I'm particularly proud of the seamless integration with the SQL query engine.
While this project is a submission for the hackathon, I'm pretty sure I'll use it weekly, and others might too. Managing productivity tools with a declarative language is an efficient and effective approach.