The meeting focused on troubleshooting a problem with API requests. Participants from State Changers discussed an issue related to an API request failing to return desired data structures from two different tables. The problem was in pulling attributes from a different table and making them an array of objects but ended up with an array of arrays of a single object.
One of the Table references discussed was the "Attributes" table. Issues were encountered on how to customize the response from the API and the data structure relationships. The participants pointed out that the data structure was complicated than it needed to be, and there were efforts to simplify it. A solution that came up was making a new field (Attribute ID 2) and making it a table reference to the "Attributes" table while restructuring it to make it a list. By doing this, the process and the data structure significantly simplified. Another issue came up with the attribute arrays, which lead to a conversation on normalization. The conclusion was that if the information about an attribute resides in the Attributes table, it doesn't need to be repeated because it's referenced by the table reference. Further troubleshooting led to some unique problems related to Xano's PHP way of dealing with add-on arrays and the need to customize the add-on array depending on the output requirement. A tip shared in this case was to give oneself permission to try different options when facing uncertainties, like whether to choose between 'single' or 'list' when setting up an array and not being afraid to change options if the results are not as expected. Platforms mentioned in this meeting are: - Xano
(Source: Office Hours 7/25 )
