Help needed: Nested Rest API calls - e.g. Netbox

[janhoelscher]

What is my Problem?
I want to do rest query to consume some data from Netbox in my forms.

In my case, i'm having one field for a virtual machine and another one which gives me all related contacts for this vm.

These contact assignments returns something like:

{
    "count": 2,
    "next": null,
    "previous": null,
    "results": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contact-assignments/1/",
            "display": "<hidden> -> <hidden>",
            "object_type": "virtualization.virtualmachine",
            "object_id": 1,
            "object": {
                "id": 1,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/virtualization/virtual-machines/1/",
                "display": "<hidden>",
                "name": "<hidden>",
                "description": ""
            },
            "contact": {
                "id": 1,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contacts/1/",
                "display": "<hidden>",
                "name": "<hidden>r",
                "description": "<hidden>"
            },
            "role": {
                "id": 1,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contact-roles/1/",
                "display": "Serveradmin",
                "name": "Serveradmin",
                "slug": "serveradmin",
                "description": ""
            },
            "priority": null,
            "tags": [],
            "custom_fields": {},
            "created": "2025-04-14T10:36:37.411396Z",
            "last_updated": "2025-04-14T10:36:37.411409Z"
        },
        {
            "id": 3,
            "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contact-assignments/3/",
            "display": "<hidden> -> <hidden>",
            "object_type": "virtualization.virtualmachine",
            "object_id": 1,
            "object": {
                "id": 1,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/virtualization/virtual-machines/1/",
                "display": "<hidden>",
                "name": "<hidden>",
                "description": ""
            },
            "contact": {
                "id": 2,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contacts/2/",
                "display": "<hidden>",
                "name": "<hidden>",
                "description": "<hidden>"
            },
            "role": {
                "id": 2,
                "url": "https://<hidden>/api/tenancy/contact-roles/2/",
                "display": "Kunde",
                "name": "Kunde",
                "slug": "kunde",
                "description": ""
            },
            "priority": null,
            "tags": [],
            "custom_fields": {},
            "created": "2025-04-28T13:57:03.738606Z",
            "last_updated": "2025-04-28T13:57:03.738617Z"
        }
    ]
}

But in my form i want to extract all contacts with their internal ID Number, which is an custom field in Netbox.
To get this i have make a direct call to the /api/tenancy/contacts endpoint to get the full contact incl. custom fields (I think there is no other way to get these custom fields).

Possible Solution?
Maybe it would be an option to extract the contact id from the contact assignments output with some jq expression, this is not an problem.

But then i have to do a "like" for each over this array. Make an rest call for each contact assignment and build some kind of array with additional informations.

Do someone have an idea how to solve this or solved an slightly different issue?

Thanks,
Jan

[ansibleguy76]

in this particular case i would suggest to write your own backend function. AF loads or allows to load a custom functions library exposed as fnc. steal the code from the regular functions. let me know if you need more help.

[ansibleguy76]

https://github.com/ansibleguy76/ansibleforms-docker/blob/main/data/functions/custom.js

[ansibleguy76]

and steal from https://github.com/ansibleguy76/ansibleforms/blob/main/server/src/functions/default.js

[lakedh]

are those custom functions loaded automatically or do we need to allow/enable this?
Are updates to the file implemented instantly or is a reload/restart or sth similar needed?

Tried adding my own little function but didn't get it working as it wasn't recognizing the function. Same seems to be for the ones you did include as examples:

• type: expression
  runLocal: false
  hide: false
  name: sum
  label: sum
  expression: fn.fnSum('2','4')

TypeError: fn.fnSum is not a function

Edit: Looks its because of the breaking changes planned with v6. Was on 5.0.10 but the custom.js I had seems to be converted to the v6 changes with the import instead of require.

Edit2: thanks for below answer, seems I did miss the documentation...

[ansibleguy76]

you need to map the file into the docker image. and you need tonuse fnc and not fn