Calling an internal API: How can I integrate my app with a local network API?

[Michuli]

Hi!

I have a situation where I have biometric hardware detecting employees.

I need to integrate an appsheet app to the events generated by the biometric hardware.

The Biometric hardware has an api exposing these events, but the API is within a LAN. 

Any ideas on how I can go about this?

Thanks!

[Marc_Dillon]

Appsheet can only send fire-and-forget webhooks. It can't GET data from any API, whether public or behind a LAN. You could perhaps set up some local software to query the API and send the event data to a cloud-stored database.

[Michuli]

Really??

I’m pretty sure I saw some YouTube video of someone integrating with a public API using appscript and appsheet.  

[Marc_Dillon]

Yes, they used appscript because appsheet can't do it.

[Michuli]

That's why I started the post. Here I found something that helps: 

https://youtu.be/8CiwRN_rVLY

[Harriswe]

@Marc_Dillon Thank you for the AppScript suggestion. I am exploring a number of options and wonder, which one is  more practical. 🤔

My requirement is to call an external 3rd party API using token authentication, invoke a GET call and process the response by updating records (MySql db)  for use in an AppSheet app. As explained AppSheet doesn't do the latter...so options to consider are:

1. Apigee (use a proxy)
2. AppScript
3. Zaiper (but it doesn't have the API  to the external 3rd party company)
4. Postman ?

Relatively new to API development, although I do have some experience programming. I have been able to test the API in Postman out to the 3rd party software but where to next in terms of integration with AppSheet? 

@shaaland Would welcome a more detailed video tutorial on API & AppSheet integration. 

Any help welcome 🙏

[Marc_Dillon]

Zapier has a basic webhook task that you can maybe utilize.