trying to add several pages to a relation field in Notion database

Question

Imagine a database table with two columns, Name (title) and Collaborators (relation). Things work fine when I add a row with a single collaborator like so.

qveri <- list(
  parent = list(database_id = "database_id"),
  properties = list(
    Name = list(
      title = list(
        list(text = list(content = "klekele"))
      )
    ),   
    "Collaborators" = list(
      relation = list(
        list(id = "hash_collaborator_1"))
    )
  )
)
out <- POST(
  url = "https://api.notion.com/v1/pages", 
  add_headers("Authorization" = paste("Bearer", "notion_key"),
              "Notion-Version" = "2021-05-13"),
  body = qveri, 
  encode = "json"
)

> out$status_code
[1] 200

Things get tricky when I try to insert more than one collaborator into the field. The error message is validation_error but other than that, the spaghetti indicating where the error might be are pretty uninformative:

$message
[1] "body failed validation. Fix one:
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.title should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.rich_text should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.number should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.url should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.select should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.multi_select should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.people should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.email should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.phone_number should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.date should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.checkbox should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.relation should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.files should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Collaborators.status should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Name.id should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Name.name should be defined, instead was `undefined`.
\nbody.properties.Name.start should be defined, instead was `undefined`."

While trying to insert more than one entry, I have tried various ways to replace the "Collaborators" value in the qveri variable, including but not limited to:

    Collaborators = list(
      relation = list(
        list(
          id = list(
            data.frame(id = c("hash_collaborator1",
                              "hash_collaborator2")
            )
          )
        )
      )
    )

    Collaborators = list(
      relation = list(
        data.frame(id = c("hash_collaborator1",
                          "hash_collaborator2")
        )
      )
    )

    Collaborators = list(
      relation = list(
        id = as.list(
          c("hash_collaborator1",
            "hash_collaborator2")
        )
      )
    )

    "Collaborators" = list(
      relation = list(
        list(id = list("hash_collaborator1",
                       "hash_collaborator2")))
    )

Any guidance where the documentation could be of help or on how to properly construct the query in order to insert more than one collaborator will be much appreciated.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 26 '22 at 11:29

When I populate a table row by hand with multiple collaborators, the returned result yields that this is in a data.frame (see below).

> str(cnt$results$properties)
'data.frame':   1 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ Collaborators:'data.frame':  1 obs. of  3 variables:
  ..$ id      : chr "fake_id"
  ..$ type    : chr "relation"
  ..$ relation:List of 1
  .. ..$ :'data.frame': 3 obs. of  1 variable:
  .. .. ..$ id: chr  "hash_collaborator1" "hash_collaborator2" "hash_collaborator3"
 $ Name         :'data.frame':  1 obs. of  3 variables:
  ..$ id   : chr "title"
  ..$ type : chr "title"
  ..$ title:List of 1
  .. ..$ : list()

Reading the documentation and squinting really hard, I saw that the relation, in JSON format, should be an array.

This made me think that perhaps the array could translate to R's data.frame.

Lo and behold

    "Collaborators" = list(
      relation = data.frame(id = c("hash_collaborator1",
                                   "hash_collaborator2",
                                   "hash_collaborator3"))
    )

turns out to be the correct formulation of the object to be POST-ed.

> out$status_code
[1] 200

trying to add several pages to a relation field in Notion database

1 Answers1