4. Get Story Content

We have communicated with the Hacker News API, but its response contains a list of story ids while we need the URLs for our email digest. Let’s make another request (or rather, a set of requests) to retrieve each story by its id so we can later collate their URLs into a single message.

Service Request: get_story_by_id

1. From the Build page, with Integration selected under Component, right-click our integration and click Go To > Service Request.

2. Add a new row, enter the following, and save:

   • Sequence: 100

   • System: HTTP

   • Service Name: n/a

   • Formula Variable: get_story_by_id

   • Call For Each: copy and paste the Python code below. This expression evaluates to the list of ids we got from get_story_ids, then cut off at the limitQuery value (if provided). It’s ok if this code doesn’t make sense yet, so don’t worry!

     get_story_ids.response.payload.unwrap()[:input.payload.limitQuery or None]

Integration Gateway will execute a SR once for every item in its Call For Each. Using python lists is the most common.

Field Mappings for get_story_by_id

1. Right-click the get_story_by_id SR and select Go To > Field Mapping.

2. Click [➕ADD ROW] 2 times to get 2 blank rows. Enter the following values and then save:

   • First row

     • Field: url_path

     • Value: f"/v0/item/{sritem}.json"

     • Value Type: str

   • Second row

     • Field: method

     • Value: "GET"

     • Value Type: str

sritem is a special variable that represents the current item in the Call For Each of its parent SR. In this case, sritem will be a story id.

Test get_story_by_id

1. Navigate to the Run History page (or open it in a new tab to keep it handy!) and re-run the integration with this input payload:

   {
     "email": "[e-mail]",
     "limitQuery": 10
   }

2. It should complete successfully. Wait for the most recent run to appear at the top of the RUNS column and click it to see its STEPS in the middle column. We should see several records now- an INPUT, the first REQUEST (get_story_ids), but after that there should be 10 more REQUEST records labelled with get_story_by_id. Click one of them to view its request and response payloads, which should look something like this:

   • REQUEST

     {
         "service_name": "n/a",
         "payload": {
             "url_path": "/v0/item/36712566.json",
             "method": "GET"
         },
         "sub_requests": {}
     }

   • RESPONSE

     {
         "success": true,
         "payload": {
             "by": "JoeMayoBot",
             "descendants": 0,
             "id": 36712566,
             "score": 1,
             "time": 1689268222,
             "title": "Windows 95, 98, and other decrepit versions can grab online updates again",
             "type": "story",
             "url": "https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/windows-95-98-and-other-decrepit-versions-can-grab-online-updates-again/"
         },
         "messages": []
     }

Our Integration Gateway integration has now made 11 requests to an external API, with 10 of them being done in a programmatic fashion. Nice Job!