Add conditions to formulas

It is also important to create recipes that are resilient against unexpected scenarios. For example, your trigger data might contain missing values or contain a data of another datatype.

You can use conditional logic to prepare your recipes for these situations.

Conditionals

You can conditionally execute formulas using Ruby's ternary syntax (popular shortcut for if-else statements). Ternary syntax are of the form:

condition ? expression1 : expression2

Behavior

condition

A boolean expression that evaluates to true or false.

expression1

Returns this expression if condition is true.

expression2

Returns this expression if condition is false.

Example: Using first name or full name

In the following example, we conditionally pass in either the Full name or First name into the Message input field.

Checks if Full name is present. Outputs Full name if present, or First name if not present.

Here is a detailed explanation of what the ternary formula does:

1. Full name.present? will check if the Full name pill has a value . If it has a value, it evaluates to true. If it has no value, it evaluates to false.
2. The second ? in the formula separates the condition to evaluate from the expressions to return. Note, the first ? is part of the .present? formula whilst the second ? is separated with a space character and is part of the ternary syntax.
3. If there is a value in the Full name pill when the job is ran, the value for Full name will mapped to the Message input.
4. If there is no value in the Full name pill when the job is ran, the value for First name will be mapped to the Message input. Of course, if there's also no value in this First name pill, the job will fail at this step if Message is a required input field.

For more information on Ruby's ternary syntax, check out this article (opens new window).

Example: Skip field if empty

When updating records, you want to preserve existing data while changing only the updated fields. In this situation, can you use the skip formula to instruct the Workato action to leave this field untouched.

This example attempts use an updated Salesforce record to update a lead in Marketo. It checks if the Salesforce Company is present. If yes, it will output the Salesforce Company into Marketo. Otherwise, the Marketo record is left untouched.

Checks if Company is present. Outputs Company if present, otherwise, leaves this field untouched

How to avoid passing any values

The skip formula will avoid passing any data to the input field.

Safe navigation operator

Checks if the input is not nil or undefined. If true, it performs a specified operation on the input data. Otherwise, it returns a nil value.

Syntax

Input&.operation

• Input - An input datapill. It can be any datatype.
• operation - If the input is not nil, this formula is applied to the input data. This formula must be compatible with the input datatype.

How it works

The safe navigation operator (&.) checks if the input data is not nil or undefined. If the input data exists, it performs the operation specified by the operation argument. Otherwise, it returns nil. This operator enables you to write simpler expressions to handle nil values.

Example: Converting dates safely

You can use the safe navigation operator when you're working with a datapill that might contain nil values.

For example, applying the to_date formula directly to the Created Date Step 1 datapill would cause a NoMethodError if the datapill value is nil. The safe navigation operator enables you to handle these cases without complex ternary expressions.

# Instead of: created_date.present? ? created_date.to_date(format:"MM/DD/YYYY") : nil
created_date&.to_date(format:"MM/DD/YYYY")

Using the safe navigation operator

Example: Safe hash retrieval

You can also use the safe navigation operator when you have a nested hash structure, such as a customer record with optional address information.

With safe navigation:

# This returns nil instead of an error if any key is missing
customer["address"]&.[]("billing")&.[]("zip_code")

Without safe navigation:

# This could fail if "address" or "billing" doesn't exist
customer["address"]["billing"]["zip_code"]

The safe navigation operator prevents errors by returning nil if any key is missing. This approach allows you to retrieve nested hash values without worrying about NoMethodError exceptions.