Code Component Usage
The Code Component
The code component allows you to execute product or industry-specific code within an integration. This page outlines when and how to use a code component.
Why Use a Code Component?
You will likely have integration logic that can't be solved using the standard components Prismatic provides. The portion of your integrations that are specific to your product or industry can be accomplished using code component steps, or custom components.
When to Use a Custom Component Instead
Code component steps should be succinct and integration-specific. If the code you write could be reused in other integrations, or if the code is complex enough that it would benefit from unit tests, etc., you should use a custom component instead.
Adding a Code Component to an Integration
Within the integration designer, add a step to your integration. Select the Code - Custom Code action.
You will be presented with a new code step in your integration, as well as a code editor.

Code Structure
The code component provides a stub function by default. Let's examine the structure of the code:
The code component requires you to export an asynchronous function.
The default code uses arrow function notation to create an async
function to return.
Code Component Parameters
This function is provided a few parameters: logger
, configVars
and params
that allow you to log, access config variables, and access previous steps' outputs respectively.
Logging
logger
is an object that can be used for logging and debugging.
logger
has four functions: debug
, info
, warn
, and error
.
For example:
Config Vars
configVars
provides access to all configuration variables of an integration.
You can add configuration variables to your integration by clicking the Required Config Variables button in the integration designer.

If you create a configuration variable myEndpoint
, you could append text to that endpoint with a custom code block:
Notice that the step output on the left-hand side shows a proper endpoint with /extrapath
appended to it:

Credentials
The credential
object that is passed in to a custom code function contains any credentials that are bound to the function.
See the credential documentation on the custom components page for full details on handling credentials - handling of credentials is the same in both custom components and the code component.
Any type of credentials can be associated with a code component.
In this example we have a code component step that accesses a username / private_key pair that is associated with it.
It throws an error if no credentials is passed in, or if the credential is of a type other than private_key
:
Referencing Previous Step Outputs
Most steps of an integration return some sort of value. An HTTP - GET action, for example, might return a JSON payload from a REST API. An AWS S3 - Get Object will return a binary file pulled from S3.
The code component can reference those outputs through the params
parameter.
Since names of steps can include spaces and non-JavaScript-friendly characters, step names are converted to camelCase. So, a step named Download JSON from API would be converted to downloadJsonFromApi. You can test out step name -> referenceable name conversions here:
For example, suppose the integration is triggered by a webhook, the trigger is named "My integration trigger", and the webhook is provided a payload body.data
of {"exampleKey": "exampleValue"}
.

That exampleKey
would be accessible using params
like so:
Using JavaScript destructuring, you can instead write this:
Notice the logged message in the testing pane

Results from other steps are available through params.stepName.results
.
Code Component Return Values
The code component can optionally return a value for use by a subsequent step. The return value can be an object, string, integer, etc., and will retain its type as the value is passed to the next step.
The return value is specified using the data
key in the return object.
In this example we return a string with value "https://ipinfo.io/ip"
:
The output can be used as input for the next step by referencing codeComponentStepName.results
.

To see an example of returning more complex data structures, and a good example use case for a code component, see the Using a Code Component to Transform Data quickstart.
Returning Binary Data from a Code Component
Sometimes you'll want your code component to return binary data (like a rendered image or PDF).
To do that, return an object with a data
property of type Buffer
(a file buffer), and a contentType
property of type String
that contains the file's MIME type:
To see an example use case for returning binary data from a code component, check out our Generate a PDF with a Code Component.
For More Information: Using a Code Component to Transform Data
Adding Dependencies to a Code Component
If your code component depends on node modules from npm
, dependencies will automatically be imported.
For example, if your code component reads:
Then node-fetch will be imported as a dependency automatically from the UNPKG CDN.
You can also specify specific versions of npm
packages for your code component:
You can require any file from npm
using package[@version][/file]
syntax.
Note that with the lodash
import above, no file was specified.
If no file is specified, the main
file defined in the npm
package's package.json
is imported.
An explicit path was called out for the node-fetch
import because the node-fetch
package defaults to importing a browser version of the package, and we want a compiled server version instead.