How to use a list to make multiple API calls to Act-On

[BrianHoj]

I am trying to pull the Contact List data from several lists within Act-on.  I have 4 lists that I need to grab and output to CSV files.  Does anyone have an example that takes an list of values, constructs the URL for the API and then iterates through them producing 1 CSV file for each input URL?

I have the workflow connecting to Act-On and can pull a single list at a time.  I am trying to automate this a bit.  Thanks in advance.

[Aguisande · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

I don't know exactly the structure/type of response of the API you're using, but I believe this will point you in the right direction of what you're looking for:

[SophiaF · Accepted solution]

Hi @BrianHoj,

Check out some of the settings in the Output Data tool - if you have a unique identifier, you can use that to append or prepend to each csv, effectively making a new CSV for each row of data (i.e. API call).

As an example, say you have data that looks like this (imagine each row is the data downloaded from your API calls):

With the Output options set as above, you would produce 3 separate files once ran:

There are additional options besides just append or prepend that you can play around with. You might also want to uncheck the "Keep Field in Output" setting so that you don't have erroneous RecordIDs in your data!

[BrianHoj]

Thank you aguisande, this helped out quite a bit.  The thing I was missing was that I didn't realize the Download tool can take a list of URLs and each one outputs to it's own file.  It is essentially running a Batch operation without needing a batch macro.

[BrianHoj]

Thank you Sophia,

Naming an Output file based on a field in the workflow wasn't something I had done before.  Worked excellent.

[Aguisande]

Actually, it doesn't Brian. Is the Output Tool the one that makes all the job of outputting to different files.

But the Download Tool does take all the URLs and gets it's content one record of the list at a time, all together into a recordset (That's why the base url and the list name are separated, to be able to use it later to name the outputs).

Welcome to the world of Alteryx! Everyday you'll discover a new awesome way to do things with it!