Dashboard Widget – trying to get a sample widget to work of work item feed

Oh, thanks for the example! I wasn't aware I could nest in the query / field specification. That should get me started!

Hey, your tips were really helpful! I have another two questions, though:

- is there any way to test with a live server / socket mode or something? Or do I have to build & upload again and again?

- Would I need to fetch e.g. like that in the app component or would this be better written in backend / backend global? 

const test = await host.fetchYouTrack(`workItems?q=work date: ${formatDate(config.from, "yyyy-MM-dd")} .. ${formatDate(config.to, "yyyy-MM-dd")}`,
                    {
                        query: {
                            fields: "issue(id),author(login),date,duration(minutes)"
                        }
                    })

                console.log(test, "result");

 I don't quite understand when I would resort to custom endpoints. I've seen the backend module in the worklog section; so I thought I could just write a module export that takes e.g. start date, end date?

const search = require("@jetbrains/youtrack-scripting-api/search");
const formatDate = "date-fns/format";

const getWorkItems = (from, to) => {
  const foundIssues = search.search(`work date: ${formatDate(from, "yyyy-MM-dd")} .. ${formatDate(to, "yyyy-MM-dd")}`);
  
  if (foundIssues.length === 0) {
    return [];
  }
  
  const issueData = foundIssues.map(issue => {
    // location as customfield
    const { id, summary, location } = issue;
    return {
      id,
      summary,
      location
    };
  });
  
  // extracting all work items 
  const workItemArray = foundIssues.map(issue => {
    // adding issue id as foreign key to reduced work item array
    return issue.workItems.map(item => {
      const { date, author, duration } = item;
      return {
        date,
        author,
        durationMinutes: duration.minutes,
        issueId: issue.id
      };
    });
  }).flat();
  
  return {
    issues: issueData,
    workItems: workItemArray
  };
};

module.exports = getWorkItems;

In my mind this doesn't count as a custom endpoint as it uses the standard JS API. My goal is to get all work items in a certain timeframe and then be able to group them by their issue's custom field “location”.

If you could give me another pointer how to structure the code I'd be very grateful!

Hi!

Is there any way to test with a live server instead of building and uploading each time?

If you're using the TypeScript Enhanced DX scaffold on YouTrack 2026.2.16593 or later, npm run dev gives you frontend hot reload and automatically rebuilds and uploads backend changes. See the Local Development guide for the setup.

Should I fetch work items in the widget, or write a backend module?

For your report, I'd start with the REST API from the widget. The Work Items REST resource lets you filter work items by date and request their related issue fields, so you can group the results by Location in the widget. The Host API reference shows how a widget makes these requests with host.fetchYouTrack().

A backend function on its own is not callable from a widget. You'd need an app HTTP handler exposed to the widget via host.fetchApp(). I'd consider that only if you later need server-side aggregation or app-only data that the REST request can't provide.

Thank you so much, I hadn't noticed that there's this Enhanced DX scaffold option (seems to be quite new, too). And also thanks to your help, I was able to get it up and running, very nice! 

(to add to everything, I was doing visualisation with D3, which – even without YouTrack as host – is a lot of part that need to cooperate, so to say):

You are welcome! Glad to hear that it helped!

Feel free to reach out if there's anything else I can assist you with.