Trying to get some data out of airtable into Bubble using Parabola.
Has anyone got it to work? Documentation is pretty useless and I am burning through Parabola credits trying to test it (now there is a shitty business model if ever I saw it).
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I have a few working parabola to bubble workflows. I can help you will pm you tomorrow afternoon.
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Have you tried airtable api?
Intergromat?
Yes, I can pull in the data using a Bubble API workflow and using the brute force method I can do it in Integromat (delete everything and then replace it all).
But thought I would give the “new” Parabola/Bubble tie-up a try. It should mean only updating those rows that have changed.
Actually, I think I may well have it working - I think it needed a Content Type to work.
Are you sending data from bubble to parabola or vice versa? I’ve only done it parabola to bubble.
Yeah, Parabola to Bubble. It was the Content Type I needed I think.
Where are you adding the content-type in parabola? Did you create a manual API in parabola to export back to bubble?
They have a bubble widget plugin now that you can use to export back to parabola. All you need is to enter your:
- api/1.1/obj api endpoint
- Your body JSON “Bubble data type name”: “{parabola name}”,
- Bearer token
Sidenote - the maximum export speed I can obtain from parabola back to bubble is 250 / 280 request per minute, for each bubble export widget. When I have a large file, I break up the export from parabola so that I have multiple API exports happening at once to achieve 1000 or 2000 request per minute back to bubble.
I am using the Parabola plugin, and needed to add the content type
Or that might just be something I did and it suddenly worked 
My data is in Airtable, and the limit of 100 records makes it quite hard to show markers on maps etc so I am importing skeleton data into Bubble and then I can link out Airtable using the Id if I need to.
It is quite slow and annoyingly you can’t stop parabola when it is running, so it can take an hour to wait before you realise you have messed up.
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I haven’t had to any any custom header. Mine is blank. No problems running it for 10s of thousands of items. My speed average is about 250 per minute for each bubble export widget.
Ha, yeah, I did wonder if it was coincidental 
Some Gotchas…
- Bubble get is limited to 500 out of the box so need to increase the page size
- If you try to use an empty table Parabola will fail. Add a “deleteme” entry in the key field manually
- There is an interesting bug, I think, with PATCHing an address field. POST does the Geocode ok, PATCH sets the address to 1816 28th Ave S F, Birmingham, AL 35209, USA every time
- You can quickly run out of geocoded and Parabola creds (although they are changing the pricing model I understand)
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Hi @gilles , I am not understanding what I need to add in the body. Is it the whole table converted to JSON ?
Also does this work well when using PATCH ? For some reason I’m getting a 405 error and that doesn’t seem to make any sense.
Many thanks
Hi,
You’ll need to hand-bomb the json code into the parabola api export window. It’s pretty easy once you see an example. I’ll post something by tomorrow on how to correctly write it in parabola.
I haven’t used PATCH yet, not sure. Check the parabola documentation.
thx,
G
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I posted over on the Parabola forum.
PATCH works fine, but it is really picky about JSON format and also make sure you have the fields named correctly.
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Hey @NigelG thanks for sharing. Have you ever tried to export from Parabola and update fields which happen to be of a relational type ? How about lists ? Anyway I’m having a hard type with updating one of the columns and I believe it might be because it is both of those things(relational type and list). What do you think ? Thanks
No, I haven’t done that yet.
The “basic” export is hard enough!
I’m not a fan of parabola’s new pricing plans. Starting to look for other alternatives or just doing all my manipulation work in bubble.
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Actually, they were pretty good when people kicked up a fuss.
Compared to making you pay to test the (pretty poor) Bubble integration … the current pricing is in some ways better than it was.
Personally, I think they have really stalled, and are headed down a “let’s integrate Shopify” route as that seems to be where the money is, not Bubble developers.
Which I understand.
One of tools I would drop like a stone if a cloud based REST enabled ETL tool came along and a fair price.
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In my case there were several things that helped :
- Making sure the data is clean (if it’s a number column, make sure it’s a number in the CSV and there’s no random text floating around, nor “N/A” errors from faulty formulae)
- Add a “Clean data” step between the CSV and the Bubble step, with the option “Clean to use as JSON”
- Use the Parabola suggestions when you’re constructing your JSON (when you type { and the first letter of a column of your data it autofills). This was useful for me because there were some trailing spaces in the column titles I’d missed.
- For the Bubble table / field references in the Parabola JSON, check your “Settings > API” page to see the exact names of the Tables (sometimes it doesn’t match what you see in the Data tab) and check for case-sensitive mistakes in the field names from the Data tab.
- As @NigelG said (Good to see you back here buddy, you haven’t fully abandoned us for Wappler then?
) try rate limiting to 500 per Parabola workflow run. I’d also suggest using the “Limit rows” step for testing, so you can see how it reacts with 5 data entries before you wait 20 minutes for 10k data entries to realise you’ve made a simple mistake 
Also, don’t forget the basic Parabola structuring needed :
-
There must be a “Unique ID” field in your CSV data that corresponds to the data you’re trying to PATCH (update some fields without destroying other fields).
-
This Unique ID field will go into the “API Endpoint URL” in the Parabola Bubble step, like this :
https://YOURSITE.com/api/1.1/obj/YOURTABLENAME/{Unique ID}
So for acme.com updating the table “Anvils” it would be:
https://acme.com/api/1.1/obj/Anvils/{Unique ID} -
The JSON needs to be carefully set up with each field you want to update. Bubble field names on the left, equivalent Parabola column titles on the right, like this :
{
“Anvil name”: “{anvil_column}”,
“Anvil weight”: “{weight_column}”,
“Anvil speed”: “{speed_column}”
}
No trailing commas, you cheeky non-coder monkeys. (i.e. all pairs are separated to a new line by a comma, except the last entry. Look in the JSON above.)
Final silly mistake: remember the API Endpoint Address is different for your Live and Development versions. So you’ll need a /version-test/ in the URL to update Development data.
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No, still here. Breaking Bubble 
Great post 
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