Create a screen
Leverage RESTful endpoints to generate custom screens on your TRMNL device.
Last updated
Leverage RESTful endpoints to generate custom screens on your TRMNL device.
Last updated
Creating screens requires a Private Plugin instance inside your TRMNL account. This is currently available via the web interface only. Simply navigate to .
If your private plugin's "Strategy" is set to Webhook, you can provide data to TRMNL's server up to 1x every 5 mins. Requests sent at a faster pace will receive a 429
rate limit response.
TRMNL has Device API Keys, User API Keys, and Plugin Setting UUIDs. For private plugin screen generation, we'll use your Plugin Settings UUID.
This is accessible from your plugin instance's configuration form, in a field called Webhook URL.
Send a POST
request to your Webhook URL. Put data inside a merge_variables
node like so:
You will see this payload inside the Your Variables dropdown of the Markup Editor.
To fetch existing merge_variables
from a private plugin, GET
from the same endpoint:
If your private plugin needs to maintain state over time, for example an ever-growing todo list or a data visualization, you may prefer to send only "new" data points to your TRMNL plugin.
There are two strategies to accomplish this: deep_merge
, and stream
.
The deep_merge
strategy combines existing key/value pairs with the new values incoming on the webhook. It's a good way to update nested data with only a few values here and there.
The stream
strategy is useful for accumulating values in arrays. Any top-level arrays are appended with the incoming values, and the stream_limit
parameter ensures that old values drop off the arrays so they don't grow forever.
Now you may iterate through the combined data inside your markup, for example:
If your private plugin's "Strategy" is set to Polling, the TRMNL server will periodically fetch for new data from an endpoint of your choice.
Simply provide 1 or more "Polling URL" inside your private plugin's configuration form, and TRMNL will make requests to those URLs. For quick testing, we've prepared an endpoint that responds with text
and author
key/value pairs, along with a collection
array for quick demonstration:
If your desired polling URL contains a collection/array in the root node, TRMNL will nest it inside a key named "data" for accessibility by the Liquid templating engine. Here is an example of that style payload:
For more help, see our or join the developer Discord from your account tab.