May Updates
May Updates
In our effort to empower non-programmer builders to solve all kinds of automation challenges, we have focussed on improving the Tiny Kitchn Language (TiKiLa) that allows you to calculate, modify and manipulate data inside of Patch nodes.
We will be hosting a TiKiLa webinar to go through common use cases and offer time for Q&A on this new powerful feature. We’ll be in touch about a concrete date and time.
We have also built Error Handling into the Kitchn.io platform, which allows you to explicitly manage errors coming from ad platforms or other external connectors. This makes it possible to e.g. pass Facebook error messages back into a spreadsheet or Slack.
Nodes
- Patch Nodes - We now support duplicating (purple) individual patches and changing their order (pink).
- Revamped and improved Patch JSON TiKiLa node
- Autocomplete of TiKiLa functions. Start typing one and complete by hitting Enter.
- Datetime & Time Functions - We can now natively support dates and times with timezones, e.g. to compare dates to another. A typical example might be where you have a created_at field on an ad that was created at some point and you are trying to figure out how long ago that is compared to now: formatTime(), parseTime(), unixToTime(), timeNow(), timeDuration()
- Additional mathematical function: Modulo(number1, number2) returns the remainder when dividing two numbers
- Cast function to convert items from one datatype into another, often useful when numbers are available as strings, e.g.
cast("99,99", "float")->99.99 - Randomizer functions: randomInteger(int1, int2), randomString(length), randomUuid(), randomWord()
- Conditionals:
- Use the
if()function to check a condition and return output depending on whether the condition is true or false, e.g.:if(greater(5,2),"A is greater than B", "A is not greater than B" - The following functions are supported and evaluate to
trueorfalse: equals(), not_equals(), greater(), less(), greater_or_equals(), less_or_equals()
Numbers, text, JSON and null values are supported.
Features
- Error Handling - As mentioned above, we now support explicit Error handling through Error Rules in the node settings.
You can add any number of rules using regular expressions. It is recommended to stick to “integration/client/response_errors” for now, which are errors created from the client (Facebook, TikTok etc.) With the example below any error from Facebook would be matched.
Adding a rule adds an additional output data field called “error” and a trigger output called “failed”.
If an error happens that matches either of these rules, instead of throwing an exception and retrying, the node will now successfully finish, write the error to the error field (see example below) and continue on, following the “failed” path.
“Under the hood”
- Null values are now excluded from any TikTok API call
- Fetch Facebook Insights: We are raising now an error if Facebook is not able to create a report. So instead of timing out you will now get an error that you can handle (see error handling above)
Coming soon
We are working on changing the way to draw connections between Nodes (edges). Instead of automatic points for the lines we will give the user a manual way to draw them, which should make automations more readable.
The main change will be that instead of clicking and holding the button down, you’ll have to click once for each point of the connection. Of course, connecting one output to another input and vice versa is still supported.
In the coming weeks, we will deprecate the old “Patch JSON” and “Patch JSON list” nodes and will only support the TiKiLa nodes, that cover all of their predecessors and a ton more functionality. Find the entire documentation here.
Last updated on June 5, 2023