How to "watch" a JSON file for new items using Dates: New Make blog post

[samliew]

TL;DR

• This example shows how to create a scenario to notify you when a new Make blog post is released
• The Make blog does not have an RSS feed, so a workaround is used - by fetching the JSON of the latest post from the server and getting the last scenario run date from the Data Store
• A filter is then used to check if the blog post in the JSON has a later date than the date in the Data Store. If it does, it updates the date in the data store, and sends a notification to a Discord channel.

Problem Statement

I wanted to make a scenario to notify me when a new Make blog post is released, but the Make blog does not have an RSS feed.

I used the browser console to see if the blog posts can be scraped (dynamic or static content), but I found something better - to display the latest blog posts, the website fetches the latest blog posts from the server in a JSON format. I copied the URL of the request.

I then realised I could change the limit query string value to “1” just to get the latest item:
https://www.make.com/pw-api/blogs/search-blogs?limit=1&offset=0&sort=Newest

However, there are no Trigger modules to watch JSON for changes.

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Workaround: Data Store

Modules that observe for new items usually store an ID or date/timestamp so that it can identify which items are newer in a later run. As the JSON file needs to be retrived using a HTTP module, which does not keep track of new items, I thought of using a Data Store to store the date of the latest blog post.

Step 1

I created an “Updates” Data Store with the key set to “Make-Blog”, and a date field to store the time of the last scenario run.

Step 2

On each scheduled run (I set it to daily because I don’t expect more than one post per day), I made the HTTP module fetch the JSON, and get the “last run” date value from the data store.

Step 3

I made a filter to check if the item from the blog post has a date “Later than or equal to” the date in the data store (the “or” “Does not exist” is for the first run, when the data store is empty, or if I want to manually reset it by deleting the item with the “Make-Blog” key from the data store).

Step 4

I then update the data store with the current date when the item returned in the JSON is newer, using the same key “Make-Blog”.

Step 5

Now that I have the new blog post in a bundle, I can send the data anywhere.

In my case I wanted to update a notifications channel in a Discord server:

Setting a preview image:

Author name and blog post categories:

Here’s how it looks like in Discord

[vendy]

Hey there @samliew

Thank you so much for creating this great guide!

It’s great that we have the option to get a notification for a new blog post. Now, I don’t have to worry about missing an article.

Keep up the amazing work!

[samliew]

I’ve made this into a live demo in the unofficial Make Discord server, in the #general channel!

If we find it useful I’ll build on it further.

[OmriNyx]

Super cool!

I wonder how the first module output looks like, so i will simulate it later

[Thomas_Moore1]

Thank you, this is very helpful.

A question: if the JSON file I’m getting isn’t ordered by date, how can have the scenario find the entry with the most recent date?

[samliew]

Welcome to the Make community!

Could you please create a separate topic for this?

While it’s tempting to continue an existing thread, a more effective approach would be to start a new topic. It helps other community users to respond to your query, and keeps our space organised for everyone. If you start a new conversation you are also more likely to get help from other users. You can refer others back to a related topic by including that link in your question. Thank you for understanding and keeping our community neat and tidy.

The “New Topic” link can be found in the top-right of the header:

Thanks!