External Data Sources

Once your external data source is set up correctly, you can use its output in the email template using liquid templating language.

Using External Data Source for Content Feed

For showing a content feed, you can create an API which gives a json with many items of the content feed. As an example it can look like below:

{
  "feed": {
    "version": "1.0",
    "title": "sample-data-feed",
    "items": [
      {
        "title": "Meet the Full Cast",
        "link": "https://bird.com/article",
        "description": "See who's joining previously announced stars Katie Brayben and Christian Borle in the Elton John-Jake Shears-James Graham musical.",
        "thumbnail": "https://assets.bird.com.jpg",
        "date": "2024-08-28T11:21:00",
        "creator": "Joe Black"
      },
      {
        "title": "Stars in ASL American",
        "link": "https://bird.com/article",
        "description": "Center Theatre Group is teaming up with Deaf West Theatre to reopen the Mark Taper Forum with a new production of the Green Day musical after bringing revivals of Big River and Spring Awakening to Broadway.",
        "thumbnail": "https://assets.bird.com.jpg",
        "date": "2024-08-28T11:59:00",
        "creator": "Joe Black"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The above json feed can be used as an API URL while creating an external data source.

Once created, you can refer it in an email template as follows:

1. First add an html element and add below code to fetch the external data source by name i.e. {% datafetch "external-data-source-name" %}

2. Use the for function in liquid to get all the items in your feed along with the path i.e. {% for <your-item> in dataFetchResponse.<your-json-path> %}.

If you only have one item, this may not be needed

Assuming sample-data-feed is the name of the external data source and feed.items is the path in the json feed to get the items, it will look like below:

{% datafetch "sample-data-feed" %}
{% for item in dataFetchResponse.feed.items %}

• After this is added, you can then add any image, text, button elements and refer to the external data source as below assuming the sample-data-feed structure:

{{item.title}} - To show title in a text element

{{item.description}} - To show description in a text element

{{item.link}} - To add a link in a button element

{{item.thumbnail}} - To add a Image URL source in image element

• Now add another html block to end the fetching of external data source and the for function as shown below

{% endfor %}
{% enddatafetch %}

To preview your email, you can switch over to preview and see how your content feed looks like

Note: If you have a static feed, you can refresh it here manually by selecting the external data source under Refresh External Data Source dropdown.