CODEWITHSUNDEEP
podio
CBrown
CBrown

Reputation: 13

How to write filter {key} for a 'get items as xlsx' request via Podio API

I'll get this out of the way first: I'm an amateur programmer (at best)...i have some knowledge of how APIs work, but little to no experience manipulating the podio API directly (ie I use zapier/globiflow a lot and don't write any php/ruby). I'm sure other people can figure this out via the API documentation, but I can't. So i'm really hoping someone can help clarify and give some more detailed instruction.

My Overall objective:

I frequently export podio files as xlsx from the podio front-end. This is used by my team and me to do regular data analysis tasks in excel. I would like to make this process easier by automating the function of getting an updated podio export into my excel. My plan is to do this via excel VBA. I understand from other searching that it is possible to send an HTTP request using VBA, so i want to make sure i understand what I need to send to the Podio API to get what I need. The method of how to write the HTTP request in excel VBA is outside the intentional scope of this question (though i'd accept any help on this!)

What I've tried so far:

I know that 'get items as xlsx' is part of the podio API: https://developers.podio.com/doc/items/get-items-as-xlsx-63233

However I cannot seem to get this to work in the sandbox environment on that page so that i can figure out a valid request url. I get this message: 'Invalid filtering key' ... because i have no idea how to fill in that field. The information on that page is not clear on this. Nor is it evident on the referenced 'views page'. There are no examples to follow!

I don't even want to do any filtering. I just want to get ALL items in the app. Or i can give it a pre-existing view_id, but that doens't seem to work either without a {key}

I realise this is probably dead simple. Please help a noob? :)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 430

Answers (1)

Brad Smith
Brad Smith

Reputation: 335

Unfortunately, the interactive API sandbox does not behave appropriately for this particular endpoint. For filtering, this API endpoint expects query string parameters where the field-value pairs consist of integer field IDs and the allowed values for each field. Filtering by fields is totally optional. It looks like this sandbox page isn't built for this kind of operation with dynamic query string field names; wherever you see the {key} field on that page is meant as a placeholder for whatever field IDs that you would use for filtering.

If you want to experiment with this endpoint, I would encourage you to try another dedicated HTTP client first. I was able to get this simple example working with the command-line program wget:

wget --header="Authorization:OAuth2 $MY_SECRET_TOKEN" \
     --content-disposition \
    "https://api.podio.com/item/app/16476850/xlsx/"

In this case, wget downloaded an Excel file containing all the items in my app without any filtering applied. The additional --content-disposition argument tells wget to save the output as a file with a name using the information in the server's Content-Disposition response header.

With a filter applied:

wget --header="Authorization:OAuth2 $MY_SECRET_TOKEN" \
     --content-disposition \
    "https://api.podio.com/item/app/16476850/xlsx/?130654431=galaxy"

In this case, the downloaded file filtered the results to items where field id 130654431 (which is a category field) contain the value galaxy.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions