Help with API Data Imports - Updating Existing Fields

Are you trying to do this completely through Quickbase?

To my knowledge it is not possible. I also work for a Solar Company and have tons of running API integrations with our QuickBase CRM. I use Zapier as a middleman to manipulate the data. 

You can send as much data as you want from QuickBase, that is the easy part. Then you have to find something (your own server, or in my case Zapier) to take the response and POST it in the field_IDS you want into QuickBase since you cannot filter responses in QuickBase itself.

I don't work for a solar company but QuickBase is so successful in this industry I have been thinking about starting my own solar company. QuickBase can easily handle this task without involving an external service.

Normally, one web site cannot access data from another web site because of a policy all browsers implement called the Same Origin Policy. However, the good folks over at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have made their API work across domains by including a special header in their response that allows access from all domains:

      Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Because of this you can directly call this API from QuickBase without involving an intermediate server.

This is the essential code that will call the API and populate 12 fields with fids 6 through 17 with the ac-monthly values:

var url = "https://developer.nrel.gov/api/pvwatts/v6.xml";
url += "?api_key=DEMO_KEY";
url += "&address=1600 Ampitheater Parkway, Mountain View, California";
url += "&system_capacity=3.05";
url += "&azimuth=180";
url += "&tilt=18.43";
url += "&array_type=1";
url += "&module_type=1";
url += "&losses=11.72"; 
var fids = [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]; 
$.get(url, function(xml) {
  console.dirxml(xml);
  $("response outputs ac-monthly[type=array] ac-monthly[type=float]", xml).each(function(index) {
    console.log('_fid_${fids[index]}', $(this).text());
    $('#_fid_${fids[index]}').val($(this).text());
  });
});

You can run this code from the console on an add or edit form assuming you have specified your 12 fid values. A complete solution would involve implementing the IOL technique and the appropriate logic to assign the input parameters in the URL.

I am tied up at the moment starting my own solar company but if you need additional help with this task feel free to contact me off-world using the information in my profile:

https://getsatisfaction.com/people/dandiebolt