Building a Web API Custom Connector

[Anonymous]

Hi guys.

So I need to build a custom connector in order to allow a WebAPI connector to work in a gateway (I am currently under the impression that web connector cannot be used in a gateway with anonymous credentials - if this is wrong please let me know!)

I'm trying to recreate a query like this:

Source = Json.Document(Web.Contents( "URL for API",
[Headers = [ client_id = "XXX", client_secret = "XXX"],
RelativePath = 
"Dynamic URL 1",
& "Dynamic URL 2" & Parameter 1
& "Dynamic URL 3" & Parameter 2
])

Basically it supplies a baseURL to an API, with authentication headers passed through and then I have written a loop in M to enable a dynamic URL using parameters to cycle through all the variations I need. This is all good and works fine.

My problem, which I thought would be easy, is to basically create a web connector API. However, no matter how I shift around the code I can't quite get it to accept the headers and relativepath section properly. 

shared CustomConnector.Contents = 
(URL as text, 
 optional client_id as any , 
 optional client_secret as any, 
 optional RelativePath as record) =>
           let  
              headers =  [
                          client_id = client_id, 
                          client_secret = client_secret, 
                          RelativePath = RelativePath, 
                          #"Content-Type" = "application/json"],  
            
             jsonResults  = (Web.Contents(  
                                          URL , 
                                          [Headers = headers, ManualCredentials = true]))
                                                                
           in  jsonResults;

Any guidance on where I'm going wrong would be so appreciated!!!

[PhilipTreacy · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

You can rearrange the code like so 

shared CustomConnector.Contents = 
(URL as text, 
 optional client_id as any , 
 optional client_secret as any, 
 optional RelativePath as record) =>
 
           let  
              Options = [   Headers = [ client_id = client_id, 
                                        client_secret = client_secret, 
                                        #"Content-Type" = "application/json"
                                      ],  
              
                            RelativePath = RelativePath, 
                            
                            ManualCredentials = true 
                            
                        ], 
            
             jsonResults  = (Web.Contents( URL , Options))
                                                                
           in  jsonResults;

Regards

Phil

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[Anonymous]

Thanks Philip that was super helpful. One issue is that with the RelativePath section (so called because I'm planning to wrap it in a RelativePath function to ensure it isn't appended to my baseURL when checking in the gateway) comes back with a "We cannot convert a value of type Record to type Text" - can I handle this problem in M, or is it an issue with my connector?

One additional question though, if I don't use the RelativePath function and provide simple text it works and in the datasource it produces, it successfully only uses the baseURL which is great but it inserts random forward slashes, so the data source ends up looking like:
"item\/thing\/join?curve\/" instead of "item/thing/join?curve"
I guess when adding to a gateway we could add the additional slashes into the URL, but do you know why it might be inserting these characters? Would prefer to remove them if possible?

If not, no worries and thank you so much for the help!

[lbendlin]

move the RelativePath section out of the headers section.