Before using actions you need to setup auth by following the Authorize APIs guide.

When to use actions?

Actions encapsulate one-off synchronous workflows that involve external APIs:

  • write back information to an external API (e.g. update CRM contact field, ticket status)
  • trigger external events in an external API (e.g. send email, Slack notification)
  • fetch data synchronously from an external API (e.g. show a one-off list of user)

Actions let you benefit from the advantages of the Proxy, but allowing to encapsulate more complex logic (e.g. chained calls) in Nango scripts instead of in your code-base. With actions, you get:

  • Credential-injection in requests
  • Logging & monitoring
  • Rate-limit handling
  • Automated retries
  • Pagination helpers
  • Actions API

Actions can take in parameters and return data. They run synchronously, so you can use them for building your UI.

Actions are also useful to handle the external API requests precending the establishment a continuous background sync, e.g. showing a field mapping UI to the user before storing the mapping in the connection metadata.

Step 1: Setup the Nango CLI & nango-integrations folder

Install the Nango CLI globally:

npm install -g nango

Your Nango actions live in your repo in a folder called nango-integrations. You can place this folder anywhere in your file tree, but we recommend you place it at the root level of your project.

In the folder where you want your integrations folder (e.g. root of your project), run:

nango init # Creates `./nango-integrations` with initial config

Understanding the nango-integrations folder

Actions have two parts:

  • A global config file called nango.yaml with action names, return values, etc.
  • A small typescript file per action, which defines the logic of the action

They all live in a folder called nango-integrations in your own code repository.

nango-integrations structure
<YOUR-REPO>
    |
    nango-integrations
            |
            +- nango.yaml
            +- slack-notification-send.ts
            +- sendgrid-email-send.ts
            ...

Our CLI helps you manage this directory, create scaffolds, validates the configuration, etc.

Next, we need to authenticate the CLI. Add the following env vars (e.g. in an .env file in ./nango-integrations):

NANGO_SECRET_KEY_PROD='<prod-secret-key>'
NANGO_SECRET_KEY_DEV='<dev-secret-key>'

Get your prod and dev secret keys from the Project Settings tab (toggle between the prod and dev environment in the left nav bar).

Step 2: Create an action

Configure your action in nango.yaml

Open the nango.yaml file inside the nango-integrations folder and inspect its field:

nango.yaml
integrations:
	slack-dev: # Integration name (must match an integration name in the Integrations tab of your Nango dashboard).
		slack-alert: # Arbitrary (unique) action name
            type: action
			returns:
				- SlackAlertResponse # Data model (defined below) as returned by your action script

models: 
	SlackAlertResponse: # Data model referenced above
        ok: boolean

Possible model types include string, boolean, number, date, null as well as arrays & nested objects. Union types can be used with |. Model names must be singular as they are a single entity.

A more complex example:

ExampleUser:
    project_id: string
    names: string[] # An array of strings
    number_of_cats: number
    completed: boolean
    emails:
        personal_email: string
        business_email: string | null
        other_emails: string[] | null
    created_at: date # Date is a full timestamp with both date & time
    modified_at: date

Nango uses the models you define in nango.yaml to provide type safety when:

  • you write action scripts
  • you trigger action scripts, passing in parameters and getting back a response

Multiple actions can take in the same parameters and return the same responses, which lets you easily create your own unified API with standard data models tailored to your needs.

Write your action

Modify the configuration of nango.yaml as you need and run (in ./nango-integrations):

nango generate

This will generate the scaffold for your action script(s). Open any action script (named [action-name].ts) which contains the following template (for the Slack example above):

slack-alert.ts
import { NangoSync, SlackAlertResponse } from './models';

export default async function runAction(nango: NangoSync, input: any): Promise<SlackAlertResponse> {
	// Integration code goes here.
}

Action scripts let you arbitrarly interact with external APIs. This logic is defined by you so that you can build arbitrarily custom and complex integrations.

Your action scripts are deployed to Nango and automatically run on a schedule. Nango offers you multiple environments (dev & prod) to test & deploy your actions.

Because your scripts run in Nangoโ€™s cloud, you cannot import additional modules (external or relative) in the action scripts at the moment (we plan to resolve this limitation in the near future).

To develop actions locally and test them run the following within ./nango-integrations:

nango dev # Continuously watches integration files for changes.

Nango now watches your nango-integrations folder for changes and compiles the action scripts & data models as needed. If there are any compilation errors (e.g. due to type issues) you can see them in the terminal where nango dev runs.

Fill in the runAction method with your integration code:

slack-alert.ts
import { NangoSync, SlackAlertResponse } from './models';

interface SlackAlertParams {
    channel: string
}

export default async function runAction(nango: NangoSync, input: SlackAlertParams): Promise<SlackAlertResponse> {
    const res = await nango.post({
        endpoint: '/api/chat.postMessage',
        params: {
            channel: input.channel,
            text: "Hello world :tada"
        }
    });

    return { ok: res.data.ok }
}

Action scripts are called programmatically from your codebase, run synchronously and return the data specified in the runAction function.

To make API requests, use the proxy exposed by the nango object (Proxy guide).

  • nango.get({})
  • nango.post({})
  • etc

You do not need to specify the providerConfigKey and connectionId fields in the call to the Proxy. They are automatically injected (as well as credentials).

Use await nango.log() to log data from within integration scripts.

Dry run your action

Before you deploy your action to your cloud account you can test it locally to make sure it works as expected. You will probably use this a lot whilst developing your action.

Use the dryrun function of the CLI:

nango dryrun slack-alert test-connection-id --input '{"channel": "C02MPPQC8FK"}'

dryrun will print the data as returned.

By default, the connection ID is fetched from your Dev environment. You can fetch connections from your Prod environment with the -e prod flag.

Step 3: Deploy an action

1. Deploy to the Dev environment

When your action script is ready, you can deploy it to your Dev environment in Nango:

nango deploy dev

Inspect the Syncs & Actions tab to verify the deployment succeeded.

2. Deploy to the Prod environment

Once you are ready to deploy to production, run:

nango deploy prod

Step 4: Trigger an action

Actions are triggered explicitly and run synchronously, with the backend SDK or the REST API:

  • Node SDK

  • cURL

import { Nango }  from '@nangohq/node';
import type { SlackAlertResponse } from '<path-to-nango-integrations>/models'

const nango = new Nango({ secretKey: '<your-dev-secret-key>' });

const result: SlackAlertResponse = await nango.triggerAction({
    providerConfigKey: 'slack-dev',
    connectionId: 'test-connection-id',
    model: 'slack-alert',
    input: { channel: 'C02MPPQC8FK' }
});