Monthly Archives: April 2018

Zapier – Beyond the basics – Part II : POST data to an external API

21 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Integration, Zapier

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In the last blog, I explained how it is possible to make custom calls to external API’s to fetch data. In this blog I’ll show how you can post data to an external API via a POST action.

First we add a “Code by Zapier” step as usual and then map required inputs. refer to my last blog for details.

Next we go the the actual ode section and add something like this :


var line_amount = parseFloat(inputData.line_amount);
var tax_amount = parseFloat(inputData.tax_amount);
var customer_id = Number(inputData.customer_id);

console.log("line_amount : " + line_amount + ", tax_amount : " + tax_amount + " , customer_id : " + customer_id);

var invoice =
{
"Line": [{
"Description": inputData.description,
"Amount": line_amount,
"DetailType": "SalesItemLineDetail",
"SalesItemLineDetail": {
"ItemRef": {
"value": "3",
"name": "Product"
},
"UnitPrice": line_amount,
"Qty": 1,
"TaxCodeRef": {
"value": inputData.tax_code
}
}
}],
"TxnTaxDetail": {
"TxnTaxCodeRef": {
"value": "3"
},
"TotalTax": tax_amount,
"TaxLine": [{
"Amount": tax_amount,
"DetailType": "TaxLineDetail",
"TaxLineDetail": {
"TaxRateRef": {
"value": "3"
},
"NetAmountTaxable": line_amount
}
}]
},
"CustomerRef": {
"value": customer_id,
"name": inputData.customer_name
}
}

console.log("Invoice :" + JSON.stringify(invoice));

var options = {
headers:{
"Authorization": "Bearer " + inputData.access_token,
"Accept":"application/json",
"Content-Type":"application/json"
},
method : "POST",
body : JSON.stringify(invoice)

};

fetch('https://quickbooks.api.intuit.com/v3/company/123123123/invoice',options)
.then(function(res) {
console.log("response : " + res);
return res.json();
})
.then(function(json) {
var output = [{error: json.Fault, invoice:invoice, response:json}];
callback(null, output);
})
.catch(callback);

The important part to focus is the “options” passed in to fetch command where we specify the POST method, Headers and the JSON.stringify for body payload when body is of type JSON as is in the above case.

Lastly, Zapier uses fetch which uses a promise based design to process results, so we have the bunch of action->then->then code.

Enjoy!

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Zapier – Beyond the basics – Part I : Fetching data from external API

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in Integration, Zapier

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Zapier is an excellent tool for Integration for Small and Medium Business. It fills 80% of the needs for most of the scenarios.

However there are a few scenarios which require you to go out of the box that zapier provides. One such scenario is interacting with an API which is not available in Zapier or which has exposed only limited operations in their official Zapier App.

Thankfully Zapier has provided the tools to do so. In these series of posts, I’ll be covering some common use-cases for Zapier.

The primary tool or component for interacting with external API is the “Code by Zapier” component.

You can add this as an Action step.

1

I typically choose “Javascript” which is essentially Node JS.

2

Any data from other steps that you want to pass in can be added here and it’ll be available under “inputData” object. So if you add a property “first_name” then it’ll be available in code as “inputData.first_name”

3

And under the code section, you can include your actual code like

fetch('http://example.com/')
  .then(function(res) {
    return res.json();
  })
  .then(function(json) {
    var output = {id: 1234, response: json};
    callback(null, output);
  })
  .catch(callback);

Zapier uses Node Fetch module to get data. It is a promise based library and requires some then, callback logic.

This is a simple example to call “GET” operation on any API. If you need to pass some headers, do it as :

var options = {
 headers:{
 "Authorization": "Basic Abcdesjjfjfj="
 } 
};
fetch('https://us2.api.mailchimp.com/3.0/campaigns/1a2s3d/content',options) 
    .then(function(res) {
        return res.json();
    })
    .then(function(json) {
        var html_content = json.archive_html;
        var output = {"content":html_content}; 
        callback(null, output);
    })
 .catch(callback);

In the next posts, we’ll go into some more complex scenarios including use of OAuth based API and POST using Zapier.