Unexpected Behavior When Integrating External APIs for Budgeting Tools. Anyone Seen This?

🤝 Discussion
1

Hey folks, I’ve been working on a budgeting app using Retool, and I’m running into a strange issue when trying to integrate an external API that tracks financial goals and spending patterns. The data fetch seems fine on initial load, but any updates through user input sometimes don’t reflect immediately in the UI or trigger errors sporadically.

I’ve set up dynamic queries with proper event handling, but still no luck. Is there something quirky with how Retool handles API polling or state management after a user input? Maybe I’m missing a debounce or a refresh config somewhere?

Also curious has anyone tried syncing this kind of setup with third-party financial tracking tools? I’m thinking of extending this into something more advanced, maybe even with advisory insights.

Any tips or shared experiences would really help! Thanks in advance.

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Hi @Abby_Bowen - thanks for reaching out!

Can you clarify whether your data refreshes inconsistently or not at all? And what do you mean by dynamic queries? Queries that run periodically? My gut reaction is that you may just need to explicitly re-trigger the query that fetches your data after successfully updating it via a separate query. You mention above that you're already using event handlers, which is definitely how I recommend implementing such a pattern.