How to Connect External API

APIs are like a receptacle of functionality -shared with the world- from which you can pull and send data to. The better the API, the easier it is to develop a program. External APIs are those which are provided by the third party to use their resources/features. They provide flexibility in the functioning of the apps through which you can make apps perform various tasks.

You can easily, seamlessly add external APIs to the app you’re building on Configure.IT. To do this, go to API-configuration and fill the required details after which you can make logic on the API workspace.

Go to API-Connector and choose the appropriate API- custom or external. The parameters inserted here will be appended to the URL when the request to the API is made.

Next, enter the input parameters in the  API_output_parameters id, which will then be filled with the response list, if the parameters were a success.

On failure, click ‘configure’ and drag the whole thing to the ‘choose_output_parameter’ and save. Then create a table to save these results. While filling the table make sure that there are no duplicate rows.

Delete the right edge/line connecting the condition to the external API and click on the left side and drag it towards the external API. Insert and name the condition after the external API and then choose ‘flow’ and ‘external api’ as operands.

On the right side of this condition insert a query which will insert the source into the table. In the  query change batch_insert option to ‘yes’, then select into the fields in which the data is to be inserted. To display a new entry into the table, add and rename another query and then add a finish block. Enter some message and save.

On the left side of the condition add a finish block and rename it to failure. Check the error and change the status code to “bad-request”, success to 0 and message as failure and connect the success side of the condition to the query.

To test the API, hit refresh screen and later hit execute, after which you can see the response from the API. If you see your table you’ll notice it is filled with some rows. Click on execute to see if there is any duplication of data in the table. If there is no duplication then the API is working.

Now you can easily go ahead & add any external API to your app! What’s more, we’ve made it even easier for you, you can watch a detailed step by step of this process in a video tutorial we’ve made, using the open API by NASA