Working with API

Automated Bash script for normalizing and bulk-importing contacts from Excel files into API.

The import_contacts.sh script does the following:

• Normalizes and sanitizes phone numbers (removes +, spaces, hyphens, and brackets, leaving digits only).
• Validates required fields (Full Name and Phone Number).
• Splits large lists into batches (chunks) for safe API transmission.
• Handles network errors (timeouts) and server HTTP errors (4xx/5xx).
• Generates a detailed report and results log.

1. System Requirements & Installing Dependencies

The script relies on the following CLI utilities: curl, jq, miller (mlr), and gnumeric (ssconvert for Excel conversion).

macOS (via Homebrew)

brew install gnumeric miller jq curl

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y gnumeric miller jq curl

2. Environment Configuration

Copy the configuration template .env.example to .env:

cp .env.example .env

Open the .env file and set the URL and API access token:

COMPANY_URL=your_url_here
TOKEN=your_access_token_here
TYPE_ID=200
BATCH_SIZE=1000

3. Contact File Requirements

The input file can be in .xls or .xlsx format. The first row must contain column headers.

4. Usage & Execution

Make the script executable (run once before the first execution):

chmod +x import_contacts.sh

Standard import run:

./import_contacts.sh --file contacts.xlsx --queue-id 123

Upon completion, the script generates a detailed summary log.