Best answer

Polling an API for Updated records, not just new ones?

  • 24 March 2020
  • 6 replies
  • 1923 views

I’m polling an API for records using the Webhooks Retrieve Poll.

The problem is that this firstly only retrieves records that are new since the Zap was created.  

I can get around that by importing all existing records into the spreadsheet that these records end up after the zap.

 

But the big problem is the Retrieve Poll only looks at the deduplication field to see if something is a new record and only retrieves that. It doesn’t have a way to retrieve changes to an existing record.

The API I’m accessing doesn’t have the capability to push out webhooks, and answer them. So I can’t set it to notify Zapier of a new or updated record.

 

I’m sure I’m not the first person to have this issue - so I’m wondering if anyone has jury-rigged some crazy way around this?

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Best answer by christina.d 7 June 2023, 23:53

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6 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Hi there @gwpac - Thanks for writing in today!

To better assist you, I have escalated your ticket to our Support team so we could include your request in our wish list. If there’s an update for us to share with you, an email message will be sent directly to you.

Thanks!

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @gwpac that’s a great question. In addition to the feature request that @steph.n mentioned, we had a conversation around this in this post - you might find a couple of ideas there.  The gist of ideas was to use another app as an intermediary, to record the items and check for duplicates. I hope that helps!

Hi @Danvers, @steph.n 
Are there any solutions now present for polling an API endpoint for updated records and not just new ones? This is something I am looking for too.
 

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @scrappyapparel, the feature request that Steph mentioned is still open and I’ve added you to it. So as of now, the link that Danvers posted above would still be your best bet.

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@scrappyapparel This can solved using a custom integration. This will work if each item of the data in your API contains an updated_at timestamp that would change when the record is updated. So when you fetch data from the API, you should transform it so that each item id becomes a combination of the original item id and the updated_at timestamp. This will allow you to bypass the deduper and trigger the zap for updated items.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey friends, I wanted to pop in with a small update.

The team decided not to pursue this feature request at this time. That said, it looks like there may be some solid workarounds recommended by a few community members! I’ll list them below in case it’s helpful.

...we had a conversation around this in this post - you might find a couple of ideas there.  The gist of ideas was to use another app as an intermediary, to record the items and check for duplicates. I hope that helps!

 

This can solved using a custom integration. This will work if each item of the data in your API contains an updated_at timestamp that would change when the record is updated. So when you fetch data from the API, you should transform it so that each item id becomes a combination of the original item id and the updated_at timestamp. This will allow you to bypass the deduper and trigger the zap for updated items.

If ya’ll have any questions, let us know - we’re always happy to help!