Importing Data

The first step of data processing in Monkedo is importing data from various sources into your automation workflows. Monkedo offers several ways to bring data into your automation, whether it’s pulling in data from connected apps, uploading files, retrieving information from the Internet, making API calls, or accessing databases directly. Let’s take a look at each of these data import options.

Monkedo integrates with a wide range of applications and offers thousands of components for various operations. Using these components, you can connect to popular apps to retrieve data for use in your automations. Here is an example component that gets tasks from a task management application, Cubicl. You can search for apps in the Component Selector by clicking the Action category at the left side of the automation editor.

If you cannot find the app you are using in the Monkedo Integrations page, consider exploring API-based integrations described in the “Using APIs” section below. Alternatively, you may submit integration requests for new apps to be added in future platform updates.

Uploading files is another common way to bring data into Monkedo. These files can contain text, logs, structured data, and more. Monkedo has components like Get Data, Get Lines, and Create Table from File to handle a variety of file types:

• Get Data reads the full text content of a plain text file (like TXT, JSON, XML) and provides it as a single text block. This is useful for files containing pure data without complex formatting. Files that contain styling and images are not "plain text" files. Common examples of such files are doc, docx and pdf files. You need to convert them to plain text by using export functionality of those programs or simply copying and pasting the content into a Text Editor and saving it as a TXT file.

• Get Lines reads a file line by line, outputting each line as a list item. This is helpful for structured data like log files or lists where each line represents an individual record or item. Here is an example todo list where each line contains a separate todo:

Get Lines component outputs a list containing each todo item as shown below.

Create Table From File component reads tabular data in XLSX and CSV files and outputs them as Table values. More data can be found under Table type article.

Note: If you need to work on many files, you can archive them in your computer (for example by creating a ZIP file) and upload it as a single archive file to the automation. Monkedo provides Extract Archive component to get files from an archive file.

Another source to get data is the Internet. Data might be served as files on the Internet or web page content of some apps or web sites.

Files On the Internet

If the file you want to use is served on the Internet at a known URL, you can use the Get File from URL component as shown below. This component provides a File value which then can be connected to another component to read its content such as the ones mentioned in the section above.

An important think to note is that, the URL must be publicly accessible. If it is behind a private network or requires you to login, the file cannot be downloaded. In this case, you may need to create a publicly accessible link or share it. Also, the URL must be a direct link to the file and not to a web page that shows information about the file. You can test the URL in a web browser. If it is a direct link, either the web browser will download it or show its content.

Web Page Content

If the data you want to use is in a web page, for example a post or data set, you can use the Get Web Page component under Action > HTTP category. This component accepts a URL and outputs the content of the URL as a text block. Usually the URL or the page you are working with will be in either of these 2 cases:

1. Page Contains Raw Data: Some files in txt, json, xml and similar formats can be served on the internet to provide raw data. Get Web Page data will output the contents of these files and they can be directly used in data processing.

2. Page Contains Other Content: This is the most common case. Usually web pages do not contain only the data you are interested in but other content as well such as headers, footers, additional text, images, styling, etc. In this case, Get Web Page component will output the entire data of the page even the ones that are not visible in the browser (HTML markup, codes and styles). In this case, you need to find the part you are interested in, cut it out and clean the content by using the Text components.

An API is a programatic way of accessing data from an app over the Internet. Web apps and pages can provide public and private APIs to share data and perform operations. You can find many APIs to get data about live exchange rates, weather forecast, cryptocurrency prices, government statistics, etc. The apps you are using may provide an API for you to access your data such as sales, customers, tasks, calendar, health, etc. Even there is an API to get info about Star Wars universe.

In order to access an API, you can use the Send HTTP Request component under Action > HTTP category as shown below. This component allows you to send API requests to any URL, supports many methods and allows you to set the request parameters. API providers also provide documentation about how to use their APIs. So, you can find details in their documentation about how to set these parameters if they needed.

Try sending a request to https://swapi.dev/api/people/1 with Send HTTP Request and see the result.

If you want to get data from systems under your control or reach, you can directly connect to their database to access data. Monkedo integrates with many popular database software such as MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebase, and more. You can search for all apps in the component selector and also the Monkedo Integrations page.

Database connections may allow both reading and writing access. However, if you are only interested in reading data, you may create a read-only database user that can access only the required tables and collections.