So, you’ve got company data stuck in Affinity, and you’re tired of copying and pasting or babysitting CSV exports. You want your internal systems—maybe a data warehouse, maybe some homegrown dashboard—to just stay in sync. Good news: Affinity has an API, and while it’s not perfect, it can do the job. This guide is for anyone who actually needs to ship a working sync, not just talk about “integration opportunities” in a meeting.
1. Understand What Affinity’s API Actually Offers
First off, if you haven’t poked around Affinity yet, it’s a CRM focused on relationship intelligence, mostly for deal-tracking and networking. Their API lets you get at your data: organizations, people, notes, opportunities, and some custom fields.
What you can do with the API:
- Pull lists of companies (organizations), people, and deals
- Access custom fields (but only if set up right)
- Create and update records (with limits)
- Get change data, sort of (more on this later)
What you can’t do:
- There’s no built-in webhook system for real-time updates (yet)
- No support for every single data type in Affinity—some custom stuff is just missing
- Rate limits are real and not super generous
Bottom line: If you want to keep another system up to date, you’ll be polling the API and handling a few quirks. It’s doable, but don’t expect Salesforce-level polish.
2. Get API Access and Test Your Credentials
You need an API key. Here’s how to get started:
- Go to your Affinity dashboard, click your profile, and look for “API Keys” (not everyone sees this—if you don’t, you’ll need an admin or to email support).
- Generate a key. Store it somewhere safe; treat it like a password.
- Test your key with a simple call. For example:
bash curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" https://api.affinity.co/organizations
- If you get a JSON list, you’re set. If you get an error, double-check permissions.
Pro tip: Start with a tool like Postman or Insomnia when exploring the API. Saves you time debugging weird curl syntax.
3. Decide What Data to Sync (Don’t Try to Do It All)
Before you write a single line of code, decide what you actually need. Affinity’s API isn’t fast, and pulling everything “just in case” will get you throttled or, worse, lost in an endless mapping tangle.
Ask yourself:
- Do you need all companies, or just some lists?
- Are you syncing contacts (people), deals, or just organizations?
- What custom fields do you really care about?
Make a list. Seriously. Overkill now saves you headaches later.
Things to ignore (for most use-cases):
- Activity and email data—they’re not well-exposed via API and often not useful outside Affinity’s UI.
- Attachments—just more trouble than they’re worth to sync automatically.
4. Map Out How You’ll Match Data Across Systems
Data rarely lines up perfectly. Affinity records have their own IDs, your internal systems probably use something else.
Best practice: Use a unique field that’s stable over time (like an external CRM ID or a slugified company name) to match records between Affinity and your system. Affinity’s internal IDs are fine for lookups, but don’t make them the backbone of your sync logic—they can change if you migrate data.
Pro tip: Keep a lookup table (even a simple CSV!) of Affinity IDs mapped to your system’s IDs. It’ll save your skin when you debug sync issues later.
5. Write Your Sync Script: Step-by-Step
Here’s the workflow most folks use. Python is a solid choice, but use whatever you’re comfortable with.
5.1. Pull Data from Affinity
Affinity paginates most endpoints (usually 50 or 100 records at a time). You’ll need to loop through pages:
python import requests
headers = {'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY'} url = 'https://api.affinity.co/organizations'
orgs = [] page = 1 while True: resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params={'page': page}) data = resp.json() orgs.extend(data['organizations']) if not data.get('pagination', {}).get('next_page'): break page += 1
Don’t forget: Respect the rate limits (check the docs—they change). If you hammer the API, you’ll get 429 errors and your sync will stall.
5.2. Transform Data for Your System
Affinity’s data comes with a lot of nested objects and odd field names. Build a simple transformation layer:
- Flatten out nested fields you actually use
- Normalize things like dates and custom fields
- Drop anything you don’t care about
Honest take: Don’t try to build the “perfect” schema on day one. Get a basic mapping working, then iterate.
5.3. Push (or Update) Data in Your Internal System
How you do this depends on your setup. Some ideas:
- If you’re using a SQL database, write simple upsert queries (insert or update)
- For a data warehouse, batch your updates
- If you’re syncing to another SaaS, use their API
Gotchas:
- Make sure you don’t accidentally create duplicates; always match on your unique ID
- Handle deletes: Affinity doesn’t “soft delete” by default, so you’ll need a way to detect removed records (see next section)
6. Handling Updates—and What to Do About “Missing” Webhooks
Affinity doesn’t have webhooks, so real-time sync is out. You have two main options:
Option 1: Poll for changes on a schedule
- Run your sync every hour (or whatever makes sense)
- Track when you last synced and only pull records updated since then (using
updated_at) - This is reliable, but not instant—most folks are fine with a little lag
Option 2: Diff everything, every time
- Pull all records and compare to your system
- Only update what’s changed
- Slower and heavier, but simple to reason about
Pro tip: Store the last updated_at timestamp of each record. That way, you can avoid reprocessing unchanged data.
What not to worry about: Unless you have a lot of churn, polling is usually good enough. Real-time sounds nice, but usually just adds complexity without real benefit.
7. Dealing with Custom Fields (and Other Affinity Quirks)
Custom fields are where Affinity gets messy. They’re not always labeled clearly, and the API returns them as a list of objects, not flat fields.
How to handle:
- First, hit the
/fieldsendpoint to get the field IDs and names - Then, when you pull organizations or people, map the field values by ID
- Build a lookup dict:
{field_id: field_name}so you don’t go nuts
Annoying but true: If your Affinity admin changes custom fields, your sync might break. Keep your mappings up to date.
8. Error Handling and Monitoring—Don’t Skip This
Syncs break. APIs change. Someone deletes a field in Affinity and suddenly your code is throwing errors at 2am.
At a minimum:
- Log every sync run (success or failure)
- Catch and report API errors (especially 401, 403, 429, and 500-series)
- Set up an email or Slack alert if something goes wrong
Pro tip: Don’t email yourself on every error, or you’ll start ignoring the alerts. Batch notifications or use a tool like Sentry.
9. Test with Real (Not Dummy) Data
Test with a real slice of your production data. Dummy data always looks cleaner than reality, and Affinity fields can be missing, mis-typed, or full of edge cases. Double-check:
- What happens with odd characters or missing fields?
- Does your sync handle empty lists or weird date formats?
- Can your system handle duplicates or conflicting updates?
Don’t trust your first run. Let it run for a few cycles before calling it “done.”
10. Keep It Simple and Iterate
Don’t aim for the world’s most bulletproof integration on day one. A basic sync that moves the records you care about, even if it runs once a day, is infinitely better than a “perfect” system that never ships.
- Start with one data type (like organizations)
- Add more fields or record types once the basics work
- Document what you build—future-you will thank you
If you want your Affinity data to play nice with your internal tools, take it step by step. Don’t get hung up on making it real-time or flawless. Sync what matters, monitor for failure, and improve as you go. Most of the headaches come from overengineering or chasing edge cases that rarely happen. Keep it simple, and you’ll save yourself a lot of pain.