ActionNetwork.update_person() does not update the person

[Maggiedp]

When I run update_person(), it returns the person but does not actually update the value for that person.

To Reproduce

from parsons import ActionNetwork
an = ActionNetwork()
person_id='d52040b6-0168-401f-8e7a-b49b2b4e15a1'
person_update=an.update_person(person_id, custom_fields={'2022Letter': 'test'})
person_update=an.update_person(person_id, family_name='test')
person_update['family_name']
person_update['custom_fields']['2022Letter']

person_update['family_name'] returns 'Charles' and person_update['custom_fields']['2022Letter'] returns a keyerror because 2022Letter was not added to the custom fields. It does successfully return the json for the correct person, it just doesn't update the person.

Your Environment

• Version of Parsons used (if you know): parsons==0.19.0
• Operating System and version (desktop or mobile): Ubuntu 21.10
• Is there information about my Action Network group that would be helpful here? I'm just using the key from the API page

Additional Context

I'm using the lower level function api.get_request() with the Action Network connector and it's working fine.

Priority

I think this is a high priority, since it's a bug that makes this function not work but I'm not sure how popular this function is. I'm working on workarounds that don't use parsons for updating people in AN.

[Maggiedp]

I think the json for PUT needs to go into the data parameter of the request. Right now it's going in the json parameter

person_update = an.api.put_request(url=f"{an.api_url}/people/{person_id}", data=json.dumps(data), success_codes=[204, 201, 200]) seems to work correctly

[SorenSpicknall]

Thanks for reporting this, @Maggiedp - we're trying to get some eyes on it within the contributor community. Feel free to put in a PR for a fix yourself, too, if you want!

[ydamit]

Chiming in to report that I was just told by support that the "right" way to update a record is to use the same "helper" endpoint we're already using in add_person(). This supposedly only works with POST requests, but if you supply an email or mobile number of an existing record, it'll update that record instead of creating a new one.

In my investigation, it did seem that it was possible to update some data with a PUT request to the record-specific endpoint. Specifically, I was able to update the value of a custom field (that already had a value on the record) this way. And, interestingly, I was able to do that without nesting custom_field inside of a person item.

I'm not 100% sure what the best approach for this connector is. Maybe we just need to get rid of update_person() and rename add_person() to something like upsert_person() à la the NGPVAN method. Alternatively, update_person() could just be modified to be a convenience method that does practically the same thing add_person() does.

[ydamit]

UPDATE: I learned that you can use PUT on the record-specific endpoint to make changes to native and custom fields, but that the POST request to the generic ("helper") endpoint is required for anything to do with tags.

[shaunagm]

Thanks for doing this research, @ydamit! I think adopting upsert_person while leaving add_person and update_person with deprecation warnings for now is the best way forward. I'm going to open up a PR for this, I'll @ you when I do.

[alxmrs]

Can we mark this issue as closed?

[shaunagm]

Yup, good catch