The Flow API is built using the Django REST Framework and supports basic and enhanced filtering options. Most operators are supported. Learn more about Django REST framework (external site, opens in new tab).
In this article
Basic filter options
Flow filters using standard REST syntax using the object ID.
For example, to obtain a specific user record, you would submit the following request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/users/?id=1234567890
Where 1234567890 is the specific user ID being requested.
Field inclusion and omission
The API provides a mechanism to limit the fields returned for a given object using the fields
and omit
keywords. This can help with performance and limit the scope of data sent to the client application.
Fields keyword
To limit the response to a specific set of fields, use the fields
keyword and provide a comma-separated list of field names.
Here’s an example:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/users/?fields=id,name,email&limit=3
This will return three user records with only the id
, name
, and email
fields.
Omit keyword
To limit the fields to a select few, use the omit
keyword and provide a comma-separated list of field names.
Here’s an example:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/users/?omit=email,teams
This will return all fields in the Users endpoint with the email
and teams
fields omitted:
Enhanced filter options
The Flow API offers basic and enhanced filtering options for filtering objects. These filter options greatly improve performance by returning exactly the objects you want.
There are several built-in filter options for searching:
- gt
- gte
- lt
- lte
- in
- icontains
- startswith
- between
- equals
- not equal to
- remove_excluded
- smart_dedupe
- exclude_weekends
- exclude_outliers
- exclude_blocked
- normalize_authors
- apply_default_filters
gt
Filters for records that are greater than the specified value.
Example: All commits where lines of new_work
code is greater than 100000.
Request
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?new_work__gt=100000
Response:
gte
Filters for records that are greater than or equal to the specified value.
Example: All commits where lines of new_work
code greater is than or equal to 2695.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?new_work__gte=2695
Response:
lt
Filters for records that are less than the specified value.
Example: All commits where lines of new_work
code is less than 10.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?new_work__lt=10
Response:
lte
Filters for records that are less than or equal to the specified value.
Example: All commits where lines of new_work
code is less than or equal to one.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?new_work__lte=1
Response:
in
Filters for records that are in a list of specified values.
Example: Repository ID is in 337844.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?repo_id__in=337844
Response:
icontains
A case-insensitive string containment test equivalent to ILIKE “%foo%” in SQL.
Example: Commit message that contains the word progress.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?message__icontains=progress
Response:
startswith
A case-sensitive search for records that start with the specified string.
Example: User name starts with chris.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/users/?name__startswith=chris
Response:
between
Filters for records that fall within the specified range of values. Because there is no explicit between
filter, use __gte
and __lt
filters to create a between.
Example: Commits created between June 8, 2018 and June 15, 2018.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?author_date__gte=2018-06-08&author_date__lt=2018-06-15
Response:
equals
A case-sensitive exact string match.
Example: Repository vendor type is github.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/repos/?vendor_type=github
Response:
not equal to
A case-sensitive match for all records that are not an exact string match.
Example: Repository vendor type is not github.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/repos/?vendor_type!=github
Response:
remove_excluded
Filters for commits that are not excluded.
Example: All commits except those made by excluded users.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?remove_excluded=true
Response:
smart_dedupe
Excludes duplicate Commits.
Flow ensures each unique commit is represented once and only once. Certain branching and merging activities can cause git to create multiple SHAs for the same work. This ensures you don’t double count.
Example: All commits, excluding duplicates.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?smart_dedupe=true
exclude_weekends
Filters for commits committed on weekdays.
Example: All commits except those created on a Saturday or Sunday.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?exclude_weekends=true
Response:
exclude_outliers
Filters for commits that have been marked as outliers. Learn more about outliers.
Example: All commits that have been excluded due to outlier detection.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?exclude_outliers=true
Response:
exclude_blocked
Filters for commits that are not associated with blocked or unprocessed repos.
Example: Commits not from blocked repos.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?exclude_blocked=true
Response:
normalize_authors
Replaces all user IDs with their respective main alias record.
Example: All commits, with user IDs replaced by apex user IDs.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?normalize_authors=true
Response:
apply_default_filters
Applies the default set of filters: smart_dedupe
, exclude_outliers
, exclude_pr_orphans
, exclude_merge
, and exclude_blocked
.
Example: All commits matching the default filters.
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?apply_default_filters=true
Response:
Customizing results
Filtering your requests helps restrict what data is reported, but the results you get can still be too sizeable to manage. Customizing your results helps keep the data concise.
Ordering
Use ordering to alter the sort order and type of the results. Place a - in front of the parameter you are ordering by to get results in descending order.
Example: &ordering=-id
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/commits/?fields=id,new_work,churn&limit=5&ordering=-id
Response:
Pagination
Flow uses limit and offset pagination options:
-
limit
— restricts the results to a specific number of data rows. For example, settinglimit
to 5 means that the system only returns the first five rows in the matching record set. -
offset
— indicates where to start the results. A common practice is to combine this option withlimit
. For example, you could limit the request to only 50 records and specify anoffset
of 10, which would result in results of records 11 to 50.
Note: The maximum page size is 1,000. This is set by the limit
parameter.
Here is an example:
Request:
https://flow.pluralsight.com/v3/customer/core/users/?fields=id,name&ordering=name&limit=5
Response:
The request with multiple options returns nice and clean results, but there are three important things about the response that should catch your attention:
- Although there is a count of 22598 records, the response shows only five records, as we requested.
- Instead of returning all user fields, the system has returned the two we wanted:
id
andname
. - The records are in alphabetical order since we specified order by name.