Find a single item in an array, output corresponding field

Last week I was trying to do something using a Webhooks by Zapier step, but was hitting a wall. I was building an app with Adalo and taking advantage of their API to retrieve “author” records from a database.

I wanted to look within those records and match it against a Twitter username from my trigger step, then output the record ID that Adalo would need in order for me to connect that person to an “essay” record.

Overview

In other words:

Get Twitter username from trigger
Retrieve all the authors from Adalo
Find the record that has the username
Output the record ID
Use that ID when I create the “essay” record, to link it to an existing author

What I Wanted

If I was getting the name “Joe” from my trigger, I wanted to get the ID of “1” so that I could then use it.

Using Paths + Code Step

I wanted 2 paths:

When an author exists, I want the ID so I can use it in my Create ‘Essay’ Record step
When an author does not exist, I want to first create it and then use that in my Create ‘Essay’ Record step

The Paths

In Path A, this is what the rule looks like. I first make sure that the Recordsk]name field includes the thing I’m looking for. That part is easy enough.

The Code Step

Once I’ve established that the records do, in fact, contain the one I need then it’s time for the code step.

HUGE thanks to my teammate Alexis Grant, who helped me crack this particular bit of code :)

Here’s what the Code by Zapier step looks like:

Under the Input Data section we add the username that we get from the trigger, the names we get from our Webhook step (from Adalo) and also the IDs we get from Adalo.

The code is saying:

Those names, split them up so we can get them separately
Those IDs, do the same thing
Check each of those names and try to find the username
When you do, output its ID

Copy The Code

Replace the words “names”, “ids” and “username” to suit your own use case.

const names = inputData.names.split(",");

const ids = inputData.ids.split(",");

const index = names.findIndex(name => name.includes(inputData.username));

output = {id: idsdindex]};

The Takeaway

Whenever you’re using something like a webhooks step to return all of the records from an API, and you want to find a single one by using a piece of information that you’ve got from an earlier step, this code (or something very similar) should do the trick.

Hope this helps!

Possible search terms (because this is a weird one to phrase concisely)

Extract item from array, find single array item, find a single record from GET request

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Hi, thank you for the nice article, it’s quite useful! I am actually having the same scenario as this but there is a specific use case where it doesn’t work for me. In zapier I am receiving a response which looks like this

The API returns a string value if it’s not empty, for example attribute with id 4224 has value 4. When there is no value in the definition there is no property returned for example 4204 doesn’t have string value. I am using the JS code from the article like this:

Code:

if(inputData.customAttributeValues == null || inputData.customAttributeIDs == null || inputData.customAttributeToSearch == null) {
output = {attributeValue: ""};
return output;
}

const values = inputData.customAttributeValues.split(",");
const ids = inputData.customAttributeIDs.split(",");
const index = ids.findIndex(id => id.includes(inputData.customAttributeToSearch));

if (index == -1){
output = {attributeValue: ""};
}
else {
output = {attributeValue: values tindex]};
}

The idea is to find the value which corresponds to attribute with id 4204.

The issue here is that zapier removes the comma before value 4 in the first input parameter returning only one element. Then split function returns only one element which contains value 4 and it’s on index 0. And when I retrieve the value on index 4204 it should give me blank value instead of 4. I tested this function in JS editor separately and works perfect! But in zapier the input params are changed in some way and this causes issue.

Would be happy to know if there is a workaround or fix for this! Thank you in advance.

Overview

What I Wanted