How to Understand and Implement Notion.so Workflow in Pipedream for a Beginner?

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Hello, I’m new to Pipedream and I’m struggling to get my head around the following task (Notion.so workflow). Your help would be greatly appreciated.

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Context:
I’m trying to automate things with the Notion.so API. I found many integrations and they work great as intended :raised_hands:
My workflow goal is to fetch a database within my Notion account and then update each entity that qualifies for my needs.
I successfully retrieved and filtered all the records, but I don’t know how to update them since Notion is not providing a bulk-update endpoint and I didn’t find a Pipedream integration that would do the loop.

My issue:
Since I need to use Node.js code to make an update loop I would like to reuse the Notion’s client and configuration that was already used in a previous step (Pipedream action) when I fetched the database, but I couldn’t find the configured client in the exported variables.

  1. Is it possible to retrieve the Notion client used in a previous action that I didn’t code myself?
  2. Is it the correct paradigm to adopt in Pipedream or is each step intended to redo the work about configuring the client and asking for the same props (account and database ID)?
  3. More simply: Is it possible to reuse the code from the action in charge of authenticating and asking the right props directly in my code steps?
    The goal would be to be able to do the following in any step following the first authentication with Notion:
await this.notion.anySupportedMethod() // this.notion already configured

:thinking_face:

PS: the Pipedream action I’m using to fetch the database: pipedream/components/notion/actions/retrieve-database-content/retrieve-database-content.mjs at master · PipedreamHQ/pipedream · GitHub

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You just need to ~configure~ select the client in a prop for your code step!

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Documentation is here.

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Meaning that I can’t reuse the client used in “Pipedreams’s fetch database” action?

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You should be able to ~configure~ select the same client in both steps.

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“select” is probably a better word to use than “configure” :sweat_smile: :see_no_evil:

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Ok, I need to select the same client, but I have no idea on how to do that :sweat_smile:

Pipedream’s action doesn’t seem to export the client for me to reuse/select

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Currently I copied everything here, thus I’m recreating the same client using the same code, but I don’t understand how to avoid doing that by selecting the already used client as you say so…

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It’s this simple:

image.png
image.png565×557 30.1 KB

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: What is the app name to use in props for the Notion.so API?

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The app name to use in props for the Notion.so API is "notion". Here’s an example of how you would define it in a Pipedream component: ```
export default defineComponent({ props: { notion: { type: “app”, app: “notion”, }, } // the rest of the component … })

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It’s working, many thanks !

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Also, there is this part which allows the user to fill-in his database ID, and I’m wondering if I need to copy this code and all the methods it’s using internally or if there’s also a magic config I can use to access all these prop utilities.

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Unfortunately, these methods are not available within code steps. :disappointed:

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I’ve made the same request myself many times, as it could indeed help to reuse existing code instead of writing/copying it each time.

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FYI :point_up_2:

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Understood! You are giving me valuable information here. I wonder if it would make sense or if it’s even possible for myself to create a custom action which would export this configuration for me to reuse in my workflows. Thus copy/pasting it only once inside my custom action instead of everywhere I need it.

Thank you very much for your help. I feel more confident now and I’m ready to tackle future puzzles.

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custom actions are indeed very useful, on our side we re-use them all over the place! :ok_hand:

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You actually can reference existing props defined in that app file. Since all app files are deployed as their own npm packages, you can import the package and then reference via propDefinition. So if you wanted to use the databaseId prop, you could do:

import { axios } from "@pipedream/platform"
import notion from "@pipedream/notion"

export default defineComponent({
  props: {
    notion,
    databaseId: {
      propDefinition: [
        notion,
        "databaseId",
      ],
    },
  },
  async run({steps, $}) {
    return await axios($, {
      url: `https://api.notion.com/v1/users/me`,
      headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${this.notion.$auth.oauth_access_token}`,
        "Notion-Version": `2021-08-16`,
      },
    })
  },
})

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