[Tip of the Week] Delete all Table Records using a Bot

[gio]

hello,

in this week’s Tip of the Week, I’d like to share how you can delete all Records from a Tulip Table using the Table API.

warning: this deletes all Records from a Table, please use caution

there are three main steps to achieving this: 1. create a Bot in your instance, 2. build a Connector, 3. write the Connector Function.

1. navigate to https://{{instance_name}}.tulip.co/account-settings/bots (please note you need to be an Account Owner to open this page). once you’ve accessed this page, click Create Bot that can be found at the top right:
   

   
   
   give the Bot a Name and enable the tables:write Scope:
   
   
   
   note: leave the tab open so you can copy/paste the API Key and Secret:
   
   

2. create a new Connector Function and enter the details as follows (replacing the URL with your instance URL):
   

   
   
   open the Headers section and paste the credentials from the Bot you just created. please note that the Username is the API Key and the Password is the Secret:
   
   

3. build a Connector Function with 1 input named tableID, DELETE as the method, and the following endpoint: /api/v3/tables/$tableID/records. as you see below the tableID in the URL will turn gray to confirm its been mapped to the Input:
   

   

once you enter a Table ID (found in the URL when you open a Table) in the Input and click Test (top right), you can Delete all the Table Records. and that’s it, you’re now ready to empty your Tables with just the click of a button!! again, please use caution as this deletes all records from your Table.

have people used this already?? if so, share why and when you use it.

[mrios92]

Hey Gio.

I tried this on my instance but I get this error message.

{

2 items

“errorCode”:

string"NoSuchEndpoint"

“details”:

string"That API endpoint does not exist"

}

[Pete_Hartnett]

Hey @mrios92 -

Can you shoot me a screenshot of your connector function? (Similar to this one)

A few things could be going on here. But we can sort it out!
Pete

[mrios92]

Hi Pete.

[Pete_Hartnett]

Hey @mrios92 -

I think the only issue was in the header url. Right now it is ...api/v2/tables/{tableid}/records but to embed the user inputted tableid it needs to be ...api/v2/tables/$tableid$/records.

I made this change in your connector, want to test it out and see if that works the way you’d expect it to?

Pete

[Grant]

As a note, if any of the records are currently loaded in a station, this DELETE request will fail. You can work around that by passing in a query parameter of allowRecordsInUse and set that to true.

[mrios92]

Thanks Pete, still getting the same error code as before:

{

2 items

“errorCode”:

string"NoSuchEndpoint"

“details”:

string"That API endpoint does not exist"

}

[Pete_Hartnett]

Hey @mrios92 -

Sorry about the delay on this one. Just duplicated your connector and got it working. There is was a bug introduced very recently around inputs to duplicated functions. Removing the input and re-adding it resolves this issue.

Thanks for all the great info.
Pete

[AquaMaofian]

Hello,
If this issue was revived elsewhere, please point me in the right direction.
I’m trying to use it myself to empty several tables and on the way to learn a bit about connectors and functions. However, several things have changed I belive:

1. There aren’t any Bots anymore, now they’re called API Tokens, right?
2. For the life of me I can’t find the screen where I’m supposed to input the Token’s details into the connector:
   
   
   
   The connector details screen I’ve found has way fewer details (I’ve created an SQL connector):
   

Thank you for helping!

[thorsten.langner]

Hi @AquaMaofian,

it must be a HTTP connector to use APIs.
This will not work with a SQL connector.

Then click on “edit Headers” and you will find the section “Authentication” on top, where you can set a “Basic Auth”.

Also your Host is not gio.tulip.co but your instance root address…

[Beth]

Thanks for chiming in Thorsten! I agree with everything he has suggested here

I’ll just add that yes, bots are now called API tokens.

We have a Tulip University Table API course that will walk you through the process of getting everything set up that you may find helpful as well! https://university.tulip.co/feature-deep-dive-table-api

We also have some resources on our knowledge base if you prefer to read through those - How to Use the Table API