Understand explode mode

How explode works 

When you configure an explode action, you specify:

• Path: The field containing the array you want to explode.

• To: The name of the field that will hold each individual element in the new events.

• Limit (optional): The maximum number of events to emit (defaults to 500).

For example, if we have the following array of users in an action called "User list":

{
  "results": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "first_name": "Ava",
      "last_name": "Nguyen",
      "email": "ava.nguyen@example.com",
      "role": "admin",
      "active": true
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "first_name": "Liam",
      "last_name": "Hart",
      "email": "liam.hart@example.com",
      "role": "editor",
      "active": true
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "first_name": "Sofia",
      "last_name": "Ramirez",
      "email": "sofia.ramirez@example.com",
      "role": "viewer",
      "active": false
    }
  ]
}

We set the "Explode user list" action's explode Path to point to the upstream action's array: user_list.results, and we set the explode's To value to: individual_user. Each element (aka each user in this example) within the array will have its own event that comes out of the explode:

{
    "guid": "cefbd80f-5500-4030-b638-69d86015cf49",
    "index": 2,
    "size": 3,
    "individual_user": {
      "id": 3,
      "first_name": "Sofia",
      "last_name": "Ramirez",
      "email": "sofia.ramirez@example.com",
      "role": "viewer",
      "active": false
    }
  }

For each element in the array, Tines creates a new event that includes:

• The individual array element in the field you specified (identified by the To value set in the explode. In our example, this would be individual_user).

• An index key showing the element's position in the original array (starting at 0).

• A guid key that uniquely identifies this explode operation.

• A size key indicating the total number of elements in the original array.

When to use explode 

Exploding is ideal when you need to:

• Process each item in an array individually.

• Perform different actions on each element.

• Make API calls for each item in a list.

• Apply conditional logic to individual items.

• Enrich each element with additional data.

🖐️ Try this: Configure and run an explode