Meetup Lab: Integrate Repeatably Faster with Import Sets

This lab walks through using import sets to handle complex JSON integrations. Author: Jace Benson.
This lab originally from the sndevs meetups repo and hosted on GitHub Pages.

Why Import Sets

Integrations are a big part of what we do on the platform. If we follow a few simple steps it can save a lot of time. In the past 6 months my team made integrations to Microsoft Intune, Webex, Solarwinds and Crashplan — because we followed these steps, modifications were simple for all team members.

Getting Started

1. Open Studio and import the scoped app from: https://github.com/jacebenson/mn-snug-feb-2019.git

App Branches

Step 1: Getting the Raw Data

1. Go to https://randomuser.me/api/ and copy the JSON
2. We need to flatten the object to access each part
3. Go to https://codebeautify.org/json-to-csv and paste the JSON
4. Download and open in Excel

What is Flattening?

Before flattening, the nested JSON structure looks complex:

After flattening, each field becomes a column:

Checkpoint: You should have a CSV with flattened columns:

Massaging the CSV

1. Replace results.0. with nothing in the column headers
2. Save the file

Load the Data

Navigate to System Import Sets → Load Data and upload your CSV:

Checkpoint 2: Verify the import set rows loaded:

If you don’t see the data, switch your branch to 1.

Transform That Complex JSON

1. Go to Studio
2. Create Application File → “Table Transform Map”
3. Map Email, First Name, Last Name
4. Coalesce on Email

Switch to Branch 2

Branch 2 includes a Script Include to flatten objects and paginate results automatically.

Takeaways

• Following a common import strategy simplifies development for the team
• Allows you to easily massage the data
• Gives your customers visibility into the data you have access to
• REST API integrations can follow this same pattern
• After doing this once, you can easily do it again