Working with external APIs

Loading data into Mechanic

Mechanic is an event-driven platform. This means that all data used by Mechanic needs to arrive in the form of an event. (The only exception here is Shopify itself: see Interacting with Shopify).

To create events using third-party data, use one of these techniques:

• Use the HTTP action to request the data you require, subscribing to mechanic/actions/perform to actually use the downloaded data.

• Use Couchdrop's Shared Links feature with an external FTP server or other cloud storage provider, to make any file available via a secret URL. Then, use the HTTP action to request that data.

• Use Mechanic's webhooks to POST your data directly to Mechanic.

• Use inbound email to deliver your data to Mechanic, either in the message body or as an attachment. See Receiving email.

• If you only need to move files around, without actually using the file contents, use the Files action with the URL file generator to download external files to a temporary Mechanic URL.

Writing data to an external service

• Use the HTTP action, using standard HTTP requests, with options for authenticating with custom headers.

• Use the FTP action to upload data to third-party locations. Optionally, use a connecting service like Couchdrop to connect to another cloud storage provider (e.g. Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, etc).

• Use a cache endpoint to save your data to an unguessable URL, where an external service may download it.

Examples

• Task: Send an SMS via Nexmo when a product is created

• Task: Send new customer signups to IFTTT

• Task: Add new customers to GetResponse