I’ve to confess that ramping up on the API support in v6 has been more challenging than I thought. While past Intuiface features have been easy to absorb, APIs are a different beast. After several hours of research and tests, I’d have hoped to be more proficient by now.
Your Beginner’s guide to Web Service APIs does a good job to introduce us to the basics. It’s much clearer where to find the right URL and proper documentation.
Where I personally get stuck is going beyond the very basic. Let’s take AirTable, which seems to be a very useful CMS service. I’m having difficulties understanding things like how to setup dynamic queries (e.g. do I need to create a separate Web API IA?), how to sort and filter results, and how to correctly deal with parameters.
Your examples are quite useful. But APIs seem to require a bit more hand holding to resonate (at least for me). I’d encourage you to consider producing video tutorials on end to end scenarios (e.g. finding an API, importing it, creating a basic UI, generating a query, picking parameters, sorting results), so we can learn how to translate our well established XLS best practices into this new world. I think going deeper with AirTable would make it a very good episode. Thanks!
It’s already planned to write more articles about how to use Airtable full features within IntuiFace, especially regarding their filters.
In the meantime, could you share some precise examples on which I could help you and that maybe I could use as samples for our documentation?
Thanks @Seb. Here is a simple scenario that I’d like to explore using AirTable APIs. Your advice is very appreciated. Imagine a simple database of people with Name and Photo. The goal is to be able to filter and/or sort by Name.
I already created the AirTable database (I just discovered that I shouldn’t call a parameter ‘Name’ as it’s a reserved keyword by IntuiFace)
When I first launched API Explorer and connected it to the API, I got an unfiltered view of all records. I didn’t see any parameters in the IA, which confused me. I assumed parameters would be added by default in the IA (my fault).
I added the parameter ‘FTE_Name’ with value 0 and set the type to Proper Noun. Then I created a simple Text Input field with a trigger that passes the content of the Input Text to the IA and refreshes it.
Questions:
Is this the right way to make a query? It doesn’t seem to work for me
The results are not sorted even when all records are shown, and they are already sorted in AirTable. How do you sort things?
What’s the parameter to ‘Show All’ records?
For simplicity, I’m attaching my test XP. I know these are basic questions, but your help will save me (and hopefully others) quite a bit of time. Thanks!
Hi @Seb, as I continue in my learning journey, I’m just sharing more assumptions that an API novice like me would do.
As I explored the Weather Underground APIs, I noticed that Parameters don’t have to necessarily exist in the results as well. For example, i.e. there is no field called City or Country in the results.
This is something that may be worth mentioning in your future tutorials, as coming from Excel, I assumed that a Parameter would always be one of the fields in the Results.
While I’ve got some other APIs to work today, I’m still losing my battle with AirTable, where I can’t seem to be able to query anything. I look forward to your tutorials. Thanks!
@Seb thanks to Google translate, I was able to read one of your valuable articles on AirTable + Filters and slightly advance on this front, but my success was short lived. I got lost in a sea of syntax barriers, including trivial things like parameters are case sensitive (good to know). So I got stuck again.
After studying your Fun API examples I feel I’m generally getting a decent understanding of their implementation in IntuiFace. However, I’d highly encourage, at least for some of the most important services like AirTable, to create a very detailed example that shows all the correct parameters and syntax equivalent to similar Excel features (e.g. Clear filters, filter records by … / when they contain…, sort, apply view, show X records, show more >100 records, etc.). This is the best way to help designers embrace this powerful cool feature. Thanks!
@tosolini Paolo, I will do, for sure.
In the meantime, I suggest you to create a discussion on support to discuss your airtable need and issues. Don’t hesitate to make a private thread and share your Airtable request.
