Why Iterations?
Iterations are required when we need to execute a same sequence of activities based on changing data, for example an automation where the flight details has to be searched on a web portal for each data record provided in a CSV file.
How to implement iterations in Jiffy
In most of the cases iterations are required on data nodes, for example reading from a data node (excel, database or csv) and then executing a sequence of events for each row returned. Jiffy follows a simple methodology to achieve this. The moment, an iteration is enabled on a data source node, all the nodes following the data source node will be repeated for each row of the data from the data source node.
Consider the example provided above where the flight details need to be searched for each record in the CSV file.
During execution, all the records from the input file (CSV file) will be passed to the node in a sequence. In case the node fails for 2 records in the input file then only 3 iterations will be passed to next node. The failed iteration will be mentioned as “skipped” in all the further nodes.
Which nodes support iterations?
All data source nodes supports iterations. Data source nodes accepts the input data from the user. Number of iterations on the node is proportionate to the total number of lines of data provided in the data source.
Refer: Data Sources for further details
Note: There are other ways in which iterations can be achieved in Jiffy. One can create iterations using while and for loops with in the UI node. In addition, one can also implement iterations using subtasks in scenarios where the simple node based iteration does not work.
Below video demonstrates the Iteration concept in Jiffy using CSV node and a web node.