Task API is not returning an offset

[Maile_Lucks]

Hello!

I am working on an integration using Python and have not been receiving the offset parameter back from the Tasks API. I am not sure if I am missing something, or if I need more tasks in my project for pagination to kick in. I am using the sample code that Asana provides. I get a response, but I get everything. I just want one, for the sake of creating pagination and testing, since my client has 100s of tasks in their project.

# Import the library
import asana
from asana.rest import ApiException

# Configure personal access token
configuration = asana.Configuration()
configuration.access_token = 'REDACTED'
api_client = asana.ApiClient(configuration)

# Construct resource API Instance
project_gid = "REDACTED"
tasks_api_instance = asana.TasksApi(api_client)
task_opts = {
    'limit': 1,
    'opt_pretty': True
}


try:
    
    task = tasks_api_instance.get_tasks_for_project(project_gid, task_opts)

    # Print out your information
    for data in task:
        print(data)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling UsersApi->get_user: %s\n" % e)

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @Maile_Lucks,

Unless this has changed recently, all of the Asana client libraries have paging built into them; you don’t need to handle it. See Pagination using Python - #3 by Phil_Seeman

[John_Vu]

Hi @Maile_Lucks,

@Phil_Seeman is correct we’ve enabled pagination for our python client libraries by default.

See: “The pagination feature is enabled by default.”

What this means is that in the response we return a python collection (PageIterator) object. With this collection you can simply use the response as part of a for loop to extract the data and the library will auto fetch pages for you. This is why the offset token is obstract. If you would like to get the offset token back and implement your own pagination you can disable the auto-pagination feature in the client configuration (See: 2: Globally - Disable pagination behavior for all requests - Set return_page_iterator to False)

From the code snippet that you shared, it looks like you are using v5.0.X version of our client library.

Here’s some sample code using the python-asana (v5.0.3) to get you started:

SCENARIO SETUP:

• You have a project (<YOUR_PROJECT_GID>) with 1000 tasks

SCENARIO 1: Auto Pagination [ENABLED]:

import asana
from asana.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

configuration = asana.Configuration()
configuration.access_token = '<YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN>'
api_client = asana.ApiClient(configuration)

# create an instance of the API class
tasks_api_instance = asana.TasksApi(api_client)
project_gid = "<YOUR_PROJECT_GID>"
opts = {}

try:
    # Get tasks from a project
    tasks = tasks_api_instance.get_tasks_for_project(project_gid, opts)
    for task in tasks:
        pprint(task)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling TasksApi->get_tasks_for_project: %s\n" % e)

SAMPLE OUTPUT:

{'gid': '123',
 'name': 'task 1',
 'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
 'resource_type': 'task'}
{'gid': '456',
 'name': 'task 2',
 'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
 'resource_type': 'task'}
{'gid': '789',
 'name': 'task 3',
 'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
 'resource_type': 'task'}
{'gid': '101112',
 'name': 'task 4',
 'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
 'resource_type': 'task'}
 .
 .
 .
{'gid': '131415',
 'name': 'task 1000',
 'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
 'resource_type': 'task'}

Each task in the loop is an individual task that you can do something with it in the for loop.
If you want to do something with the entire list of tasks instead of iterating through the collection one by one it might make sense to have the for loop store each value in a list.

SCENARIO 2: Auto Pagination [DISABLED]:

import asana
from asana.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint

configuration = asana.Configuration()
configuration.access_token = '<YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN>'
configuration.return_page_iterator = False # THIS IS HOW YOU DISABLED THE AUTO PAGINATION
api_client = asana.ApiClient(configuration)

# create an instance of the API class
tasks_api_instance = asana.TasksApi(api_client)
project_gid = "<YOUR_PROJECT_GID>"
opts = {
    'limit': 1,
}

try:
    # Get tasks from a project
    response = tasks_api_instance.get_tasks_for_project(project_gid, opts)
    pprint(response)
except ApiException as e:
    print("Exception when calling TasksApi->get_tasks_for_project: %s\n" % e)

SAMPLE OUTPUT:

{
    'data': [
        {
            'gid': '123',
            'name': 'task 1',
            'resource_subtype': 'default_task',
            'resource_type': 'task'
        }
    ],
    'next_page': {
        'offset': 'eyJ0eXAiOiJKVxoESLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJib3JkZXJfcmFuayI6IltcIlZcIixcIjlaWVg1STg3NTFFRlwiLDEyMDYzMDE0MzkzNzc3MTJdIiwiaWF0IjoxNzA2MDM0MjEyLCJleHAiOjE3MDYwMzUxMTJ9.DGIPuHAV5AUgvSFa2EhyzVkaCZpWW4s2d42nY-fgIhk',
        'path': '/projects/0987/tasks?limit=1&offset=eyJ0eXAiOiJKVxoESLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJib3JkZXJfcmFuayI6IltcIlZcIixcIjlaWVg1STg3NTFFRlwiLDEyMDYzMDE0MzkzNzc3MTJdIiwiaWF0IjoxNzA2MDM0MjEyLCJleHAiOjE3MDYwMzUxMTJ9.DGIPuHAV5AUgvSFa2EhyzVkaCZpWW4s2d42nY-fgIhk',
        'uri': 'https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/projects/0987/tasks?limit=1&offset=eyJ0eXAiOiJKVxoESLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJib3JkZXJfcmFuayI6IltcIlZcIixcIjlaWVg1STg3NTFFRlwiLDEyMDYzMDE0MzkzNzc3MTJdIiwiaWF0IjoxNzA2MDM0MjEyLCJleHAiOjE3MDYwMzUxMTJ9.DGIPuHAV5AUgvSFa2EhyzVkaCZpWW4s2d42nY-fgIhk'
    }
}

Since this approach disabled auto pagination we return the next_page param in the response with the offset so that you can handle pagination on your own.

---

On another note, I noticed that you specified 'opt_pretty': True in your opt_fields. This is not necessary with the client library since it returns a dict or object. Additionally, from our docs we state that: “This will take extra time and increase the response size so it is advisable only to use this during debugging.”

[Maile_Lucks]

Hey @John_Vu thank you for your thoughtful feedback and response here (you too @Phil_Seeman )