Scripted REST API to iterate through dynamic JSON fields and edit record

[mapples]

Hello wonderful community!

I'm looking to create a Scripted REST API for a scoped application. The goal is to take a simple JSON-formatted body that contains the field & a new value and use it to update one or more records. But the field is dynamic as the field is being collected through user input in a python script. I'm having trouble iterating through the JSON object and doing what I'd like. If it's not possible to have the field be dynamic and I have to check a lot of different fields to see if they exist in the request, so be it, but I'd rather not do that if I don't have to. Any help is appreciated! 

Resource path: /api/<namespace>/<app_id>/edit_records?number=0000001

Data being sent in the PUT body looks like:   {"u_field_name": "this is my new value!"}

Sample code:

(function process(/*RESTAPIRequest*/ request, /*RESTAPIResponse*/ response) {
     
     
     var queryParams = request.queryString;
     var requestedRecords = new GlideRecord("sn_table_name_here");
     requestedRecords.addEncodedQuery(queryParams);
     requestedRecords.query();

     if (requestedRecords.getRowCount() > 0) {
     
          //which makes more sense, data or dataString?
          var parsedData = JSON.parse(request.body.dataString);
          gs.info("This is the JSON object passed: " + parsedData);
     

     
          //Loop through the data and update record(s)
          //  Ideally I could do something like 
          //  requestedRecords.setValue(field,field[0]); and it would update, but alas
          for (var field in parsedData) {
               gs.info("parsedData parameter is: " + field); //currently "replaceAll" minus the quotes is the only thing returned
          }
     }


})(request, response);

Thank you!

[Ankur Bawiskar · Accepted solution]

@mapples 

As you said you will be getting the request body with PUT method

You can use this

Enhance it as per your requirement

(function process(/*RESTAPIRequest*/ request, /*RESTAPIResponse*/ response) {
     
     
     var parsedData = JSON.parse(request.body.dataString);
	 
	 var key = [];
	 
	 for(var i in parsedData){
	  key.push(i);
	 }
	 
	 // now you have the name of the field in array key
	 
	 var query = key[0] + '=' + parsedData[key[0]];
	 
     var requestedRecords = new GlideRecord("sn_table_name_here");
     requestedRecords.addEncodedQuery(query);
     requestedRecords.query();

     if (requestedRecords.getRowCount() > 0) {
     
	 // record found and update
	    if(requestedRecords.next()){
		
		requestedRecords[key[0]] =  parsedData[key[0]];
		requestedRecords.update();
		
		}     
     }

})(request, response);

Regards
Ankur

[mapples]

Thank you for the helpful suggestion! Unfortunately I'm now running into another problem and I can't understand why this is happening. 

Code snippet:

var parsedData = JSON.parse(request.body.dataString);
gs.info("parsedData = " + parsedData);
var key = [];
for (var i in parsedData) {
     key.push(i);
}
gs.info("new idea: " + key[0] + " = " + parsedData[key[0]]);

The output of the code is:

1. parsedData = {"u_field_name": "this is my new value!"}

2. new idea: replaceAll = 

function (from, to) {
return this.replace(from.toString(), to, "g");

}

The above code snippet is immediately after the start of the 'process' function. Maybe it's because of the "JSON.parse" function? 

[Ankur Bawiskar]

Hi,

but there is only 1 key in your json i.e. the field name

so array should have only 1 element i.e. u_field_name

Can you share what request body you are sending?

Regards
Ankur

[mapples]

Hi Ankur!

Your reply made me revisit my python script and I found that I was serializing the JSON object twice! I was using x = json.dumps(data) and then later in requests.put(url, json=x, ....)

Thank you so much for your help! If there wasn't a pandemic going on right now I'd give you a hug.