iSAMS Writeback - REST API from excel

[molitor]

We have the iSAMS REST API and want to load some data into student manager by batch. We have 5000+ records to update and don't want to do this manually. We currently have some standard and custom fields to update in Student Manager. We have the data in an excel sheet with the txtSchoolID as the key. But how to transform this into a REST API Put/Patch call isn't something I've done before. Any ideas on how we can achieve this?

[dmj]

It depends on which languages you are most familiar with as to how to achieve this. 

Essentially, all you need to do is to get each line you need change into a JSON format, authenticate and PUT or POST that to the API.

 

[ThomL]

Looks like there are rather a few endpoints that you can interact with: https://developerdemo.isams.cloud/Main/swagger/ui/index#!/

Might be a good idea to review any docs or info here: https://developer.isams.com/

 

As dmj outlined - this shouldn't be too bad depending on experience with language, a good learning opportunity if there is a lack of knowledge.

You could even do this with PowerShell with the Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet if you don't have a desired language - Powershell is already installed on Windows. I started to build a little tool for Bromcom to manage some stuff with supply staff via the Bromcom APIs & PowerShell - seems to work as well as anything else for what I've done so far.

[dhicks]

On 15/04/2025 at 09:06, molitor said:

But how to transform this into a REST API Put/Patch call isn't something I've done before. Any ideas on how we can achieve this?

As linked to above, there is a documented API for the iSAMS REST API. This is a Swagger-generated API, a tool that helps developers create and REST APIs along with documentation. It tends to do so in a standard way, so one Swagger-generated API works very similar to others, which can be handy. However, something to be careful of: if you are writing, for example, a particular field to a Student record, the "write student record" API call (if I remember correctly) takes an input of a "Student details" object, and you need a whole "Student details" object to write that data, otherwise missing values will be filled with blanks. Your "write" operation actually needs to be a "read record", "ammend record", "write ammended record" operation. It might be best to test with a couple of known accounts before going ahead with your 5,000+ operations.

[vikpaw]

On 17/04/2025 at 22:38, dhicks said:

As linked to above, there is a documented API for the iSAMS REST API. This is a Swagger-generated API, a tool that helps developers create and REST APIs along with documentation. It tends to do so in a standard way, so one Swagger-generated API works very similar to others, which can be handy. However, something to be careful of: if you are writing, for example, a particular field to a Student record, the "write student record" API call (if I remember correctly) takes an input of a "Student details" object, and you need a whole "Student details" object to write that data, otherwise missing values will be filled with blanks. Your "write" operation actually needs to be a "read record", "ammend record", "write ammended record" operation. It might be best to test with a couple of known accounts before going ahead with your 5,000+ operations.

100% this ^ . 

 

Custom fields can also be tricky as you need to know the ID, but doing a read will pull that down for you. We use this {{baseUrl}}/api/students?page=1&pageSize=1&expand=customFields 

 

One school as 30+ custom fields and though we ask for some to be created as standard across the group, they all get a different ID (per instance), so we have to do a read based on field name, before we can update.

 

If you can and it's affordable, i'd ask for a test system where they can clone your data for you. So you can experiment.

 

Most of the work we've done has been on applicants, not on-roll students, so the endpoints are different. I think that custom data might need updating separately. It should all be in the docs. 

 

Watch out for field types, and how they might need to be enclosed in quotes or not, and any special characters in your data that could throw out any automated conversion.