Quickstart - Workflow Development

Create a project

Workflows must be created in Projects. Projects make it easy to organize your workflows and collaborate with your team.

Go to https://pipedream.com/projects and click on Create Project.

Next, enter a project name and click Create Project. For this example, we’ll name our project Getting Started. You may also click the icon to the right to generate a random project name.

Create a workflow

After the project is created, use the New button to create a new workflow.

Name the workflow and click Create Workflow to use the default settings. For this example, we’ll name the workflow Pipedream Quickstart.

Add an HTTP / Webhook trigger

Next, Pipedream will launch the workflow builder and prompt you to add a trigger.

Clicking the trigger opens a new menu to select the trigger. For this example, select New HTTP / Webhook Requests.

Click Save and continue in the step editor on the right to accept the default settings.

Pipedream will generate a unique URL to trigger this workflow. Once your workflow is deployed, your workflow will run on every request to this URL.

Generate a test event

Next, generate a test event to help you build the workflow.

For this example, let’s use the following test event data:

{
  "message": "Pipedream is awesome!"
}

Pipedream makes it easy to generate test events for your HTTP trigger. Click on Generate Test Event to open the HTTP request builder. Copy and paste the JSON data above into the Raw Request Body field and click Send HTTP Request.

Pipedream will automatically select and display the contents of the selected event. Validate that the message was received as part the event body.

curl -d '{"message": "Pipedream is awesome!"}' \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  YOUR_ENDPOINT_URL

Enrich trigger data using Node.js and npm

Before we send data to Google Sheets, let’s use the npm sentiment package to generate a sentiment score for our message. To do that, click Continue or the + button.

That will open the Add a step menu. Select Run custom code.

Pipedream will add a Node.js code step to the workflow.

Rename the step to sentiment.

Next, add the following code to the code step:

import Sentiment from "sentiment"
 
export default defineComponent({
  async run({ steps, $ }) {
    let sentiment = new Sentiment()
    return sentiment.analyze(steps.trigger.event.body.message)
  },
})

This code imports the npm package, passes the message we sent to our trigger to the analyze() function by referencing steps.trigger.event.body.message and then returns the result.

Your code step should now look like the screenshot below. To run the step and test the code, click the Test button.

You should see the results of the sentiment analysis when the test is complete.

Save data to Google Sheets

Next, create a Google Sheet and add Timestamp, Message and Sentiment Score to the first row. These labels act as our column headers amd will help us configure the Google Sheets step of the workflow.

Next, let’s add a step to the workflow to send the data to Google Sheets. First, click + after the sentiment code step and select the Google Sheets app.

Then select the Add Single Row action.

Click to connect you Google Sheets account to Pipedream (or select it from the dropdown if you previously connected an account).

Pipedream will open Google’s sign in flow in a new window. Sign in with the account you want to connect.

Learn more about Pipedream’s privacy and security policy.

When you complete connecting your Google account, the window should close and you should return to Pipedream. Your connected account should automatically be selected. Next, select your spreadsheet from the dropdown menu:

Then select the sheet name (the default sheet name in Google Sheets is Sheet1):

Next, select if the spreadsheet has headers in the first row. When a header row exists, Pipedream will automatically retrieve the header labels to make it easy to enter data (if not, you can manually construct an array of values). Since the sheet for this example contains headers, select Yes.

Pipedream will retrieve the headers and generate a form to enter data in your sheet:

First, let’s use the object explorer to pass the timestamp for the workflow event as the value for the first column. This data can be found in the context object on the trigger.

When you click into the Timestamp field, Pipedream will display an object explorer to make it easy to find data. Scroll or search to find the ts key under steps.trigger.context.

Click select path to insert a reference to steps.trigger.context.ts:

Next, let’s use autocomplete to enter a value for the Message column. First, add double braces {{ — Pipedream will automatically add the closing braces }}.

Then, type steps.trigger.event.body.message between the pairs of braces. Pipedream will provide autocomplete suggestions as you type. Press Tab to use a suggestion and then click . to get suggestions for the next key. The final value in the Message field should be steps.trigger.event.body.message.

Finally, let’s copy a reference from a previous step. Click on the sentiment step to open the results in the editor:

Next, click the Copy Path link next to the score.

Click the Google Steps step or click the open tab in the editor. Then paste the value into the Sentiment Score field — Pipedream will automatically wrap the reference in double braces {{ }}.

Now that the configuration is complete, click Test to validate the configuration for this step. When the test is complete, you will see a success message and a summary of the action performed:

If you load your spreadsheet, you should see the data Pipedream inserted.

Next, return to your workflow and click Deploy to run your workflow on every trigger event.

When your workflow deploys, you will be redirected to the Inspector. Your workflow is now live.

To validate your workflow is working as expected, send a new request to your workflow: You can edit and run the following cURL command:

curl -d '{ "message": "Pipedream is awesome!" }' \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  YOUR-TRIGGER-URL

The event will instantly appear in the event list. Select it to inspect the workflow execution.

Finally, you can return to Google Sheets to validate that the new data was automatically inserted.