Write Actions

A write action writes data to your customer’s SaaS whenever you make an API request to us.

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Defining writes

To define a write action, add write as a key in your integration defined in amp.yaml, and add a list of standard and custom objects you want to write to.

specVersion: 1.0.0
integrations: 
  - name: write-to-salesforce
    displayName: Write to Salesforce
    provider: salesforce
    write:
      objects:
        - objectName: account
        - objectName: contact
        - objectName: touchpoints__c # You can include custom objects

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Sharing mappings with read actions

If you are also using Read Actions and have defined field mappings. Your Write Actions can use the same mappings if you add inheritMapping to your manifest file. This means when you call our Write API, we will ensure that we are writing back to the appropriate field that the customer has mapped.

specVersion: 1.0.0
integrations: 
  - name: write-to-salesforce
    displayName: Write to Salesforce
    provider: salesforce
    write:
      objects:
        - objectName: account
          inheritMapping: true

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Write a single record

Once your users install an integration with a write action, your app can write data to their SaaS by making a POST call to Ampersand, the URL is in the format of:

https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/:projectIdOrName/integrations/:integrationId/objects/:objectName

You can find your project ID and integration ID in the Ampersand Dashboard (look in the address bar).

objectName refers to the objectName key within the amp.yaml file that defines your integration. This must match the name of an object that exists within the SaaS instance.

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Create a new record

To create a new record, make a request to the Write endpoint with type being create. For example:

curl --location 'https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/66438162-5299-4669-a41d-85c5a3b1a83e/integrations/113e9685-9a51-42cc-8662-9d9725b17f14/objects/contact' \
--header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "groupRef": "demo-group-id",
    "type": "create",
    "record": {
        "FirstName": "Harry",
        "LastName": "Potter"
    }
}'

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Update an existing record

To update an existing record, you need to know the ID of the record, which is the ID that the SaaS provider uses to uniquely identify this record. If you created the record using Ampersand, this ID is available in the API response. If you are reading the record first using Ampersand’s Read Actions, make sure you add the ID as a required field in the read action. Here is an example request:

curl --location 'https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/66438162-5299-4669-a41d-85c5a3b1a83e/integrations/113e9685-9a51-42cc-8662-9d9725b17f14/objects/contact' \
--header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "groupRef": "demo-group-id",
    "type": "update",
    "record": {
        "Id": "20scv09wer3klj",
        "FirstName": "Harry",
        "LastName": "Potter"
    }
}'

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Bulk write

If you are updating a large number of records, you can make bulk writes by calling the Write endpoint with mode being bulk . Because bulk writes are asynchronous, once your request has been successfully received, you’ll get a response that contains an Operation ID. You can then use the GetOperation endpoint to poll on the status of this Operation, or view its status on the Ampersand Dashboard.

At the moment, only bulk write to Salesforce is supported.

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Primary key

For updates, upserts, and deletes, you’ll need to supply a primaryKey. This is the name of the field that should be used as an identifier when deciding whether to create a new record or update an existing record. For Salesforce, this can either be the default id field that exists on every object, or it can be an “External ID” field. This field must exist in the CSV, and must be specified in the API request.

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Format the data

Salesforce bulk writes and bulk deletes expect data in CSV format. A few things to note regarding the CSV format when writing to Salesforce:

• Column headers must match the field names of the object in Salesforce. Please note that Salesforce requires __c at the end of all custom fields.
• Line endings must be LF, not CRLF. Unix-based systems and most libraries for generating CSV files would default to LF line endings already.
• Dates and timestamps must follow Salesforce’s specified format.

Here is an example CSV:

custom_id__c,start_date__c,objective_type__c,daily_budget_amount__c 0,2023-11-20T11:36:22-08:00,WEBSITE_CONVERSION,50 1,2023-11-20T11:36:22-08:00,LEAD_GENERATION,10 2,2023-11-20T11:36:22-08:00,LEAD_GENERATION,10

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Send the data to Ampersand

You can provide your data in one of 3 ways:

• Method 1: a CSV string
• Method 2: a public URL
• Method 3: an Ampersand upload URL

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Method 1: CSV string

You can directly add CSV data to the recordsCSV field of the request body. The max limit for this 10 MiB.

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Method 2: public URL

In the recordsURL field of the request body, you can provide a public URL where the Ampersand server can make a GET request to retrieve a CSV file (max size of file is 150 MiB). The URL should start with https://.

Here is an example request for bulk upsert using the CSV file above, if the object to be written to is a custom object with the name tactics__c. (Please note that primaryKey must match one of the column names from the CSV file.)

curl --location 'https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/my-project/integrations/23rsdf32/objects/tactics__c' \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "groupRef": "sample-org-id",
  "type": "upsert",
  "mode": "bulk",
  "recordsURL": "https://sample.com/data.csv",
  "primaryKey": "custom_id__c"
}
'

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Method 3: using an Ampersand upload URL

Using an upload URL is a multi-step process where you upload CSV data to the Ampersand server using a temporary signed URL, and then make a subsequent request for the bulk write. The max file size allowed is 150 MiB.

Step 1: generate an upload URL

Make a request to the GenerateUploadURL endpoint:

curl --request GET \
     --url https://write.withampersand.com/v1/generate-upload-url \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY'

You’ll get a response like the following:

{
  "url": "https://storage.googleapis.com/ampersand-prod-write-data/example?foo=bar",
  "reference":"gs://ampersand-prod-write-data/2024/04/05/096b495a-8042-4ea7-a19f-4280a6ee84d0.csv"
}

Step 2: make a request to the upload URL with CSV data

Next, make a PUT request to the url returned from the previous request, with CSV data as the content. Please note that upload URLs are only valid for 15 minutes after they are generated.

Here is a command line example. Please note that it uses jq for JSON deserialization (otherwise the upload URL will have unicode escape characters, which the subsequent curl request will not work well with.) When you are making requests in code, you do not have to worry about this since the request library in your language of choice should handle JSON deserialization.

 # Save the results from generateUploadURL in a file called result.json
curl -H "X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY" https://write.withampersand.com/v1/generate-upload-url > result.json

# Use jq to extract and deserialize the upload URL and reference,
# and save them in shell variables
URL=$(jq -r .url result.json)
REFERENCE=$(jq -r .reference result.json)

# Upload a local file called `data.csv`
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: text/csv" --upload-file data.csv "$URL"

Step 3: make a request to start a bulk write

The response from the GenerateUploadURL endpoint from step 1 should include a reference field which is a URL that starts with gs://. Put this URL in the recordsURL field of a bulk write request.

Here is an example request for bulk upsert, if the object to be written to is a custom object with the name tactics__c. (Please note that primaryKey must match one of the column names from the CSV file that was uploaded)

curl --location 'https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/my-project/integrations/23rsdf32/objects/tactics__c' \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: MY_AMPERSAND_KEY' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "groupRef": "sample-org-id",
  "type": "upsert",
  "mode": "bulk",
  "recordsURL": "gs://ampersand-prod-write-data/2024/04/05/44691f9c-7934-4c47-9eb6-2af044b41388.csv",
  "primaryKey": "custom_id__c"
}
'

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Get the status of a bulk write operation

Because bulk writes are asynchronous operations, you’ll get back an Operation ID from the API, for example:

{ "operationId": "5e4f06ca-445f-43ea-943e-78465ee1bb7a" }

If you want to get the status of this Operation, you can either look for it on the Ampersand Dashboard, or you can make a request to the GetOperation endpoint. For example:

curl --request GET \
     --url https://api.withampersand.com/v1/projects/my-project/operations/5e4f06ca-445f-43ea-943e-78465ee1bb7a \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY'

If the Operation has failed, you can get more details about the failure by retrieving the logs related to this Operation using the ListOperationLogs endpoint. For example:

curl --request GET \
     --url https://api.withampersand.com/v1/projects/my-project/operations/5e4f06ca-445f-43ea-943e-78465ee1bb7a/logs \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY'

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Bulk delete

To delete records in bulk, you’ll make a call to the Write endpoint, with delete as the type and bulk as the mode. You’ll need to supply a CSV file or string that has a single column containing the primary key values of the records you’d like to delete. You’ll still need a header in the CSV data that contains the name of the primary key. You’ll supply the data and query for the status of the operation in the same way as any other types of bulk write. See the sections above for more information.

Here is an example request:

curl --location 'https://write.withampersand.com/v1/projects/my-project/integrations/23rsdf32/objects/tactics__c' \
     --header 'X-Api-Key: YOUR_AMPERSAND_KEY' \
     --header 'content-type: application/json' \
     --data '
{
  "groupRef": "sample-org-id",
  "type": "delete",
  "mode": "bulk",
  "recordsURL": "https://public-url.com/my-data",
  "primaryKey": "custom_id__c"
}
'

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Size limits for bulk delete

If you are deleting using a primary key which is not the standard Salesforce “Id” field of the object, the total length of all of your primary key values combined for a single request must be less than 4000 characters. This is due to the limits that Salesforce imposes on SOQL queries. If you are using the “Id” field, then you are only subject to the total size limit on the CSV data (10 MiB for inline CSV string in recordsCSV field or 150 MiB for CSV file).