I’m using (Strapi)[https://strapi.io] for a project in the fashion industry. There are a lot of contents that are related to the “season”. I could hardcode in Strapi a list of the past and future season, but it would be better if such a list could be fetched from an external API, so that it would be always up to date.

Thankfully that is not only possible, but even quite easy.

First of all we need to setup a “season” collection content type in Strapi:

Then we need to setup a service that will palace the call and populate the content. We can add it to the src/api/season/services/season.js file that Strapi created when we created the content type. The updated file looks like this:

'use strict'

/**
 * season service
 */

const { createCoreService } = require('@strapi/strapi').factories

module.exports = createCoreService('api::season.season', ({ strapi }) => ({
  async getSeasons(...args) {
    const { default: fetch } = await import('node-fetch')
    const seasons = await fetch(
      'http://localhost:5001/api/v1/process/seasons',
      {
        method: 'GET',
        headers: {
          authorization:
            'cJMbNXr93DjRQqS56rsh7RnMZABnfrectN0CYkxUefRq6dw3u7qOc51jNxGtPPOsRjeq3aYAU2JaGLQF69iiPPBDymDZLUf31kC7fL6ASePg15YVWJP9Xj7LRnddAIVZ',
        },
        redirect: 'follow',
      },
    ).then((response) => response.json())

    const data = seasons.map((season) => ({ name: season }))

    // Not: The commands below should be change in order to update the contents and to recreate them, otherwise the Ids will keep changing. 
    // Unfortunately this project didn't ship to production, so I never fixed this issue. 
    await strapi.query('api::season.season').deleteMany({})

    await strapi.query('api::season.season').createMany({
      data,
    })
  },
}))

I’m using a dynamic import here because apparently node-fetch is an ES Module and cannot be imported with require.

Apart from that the implementation is quite straightforward. I place the call, format the result, delete all the contents

The last thing we need is a cron job to keep the data updated. This is really easy, since cron jobs are a feature in Strapi. To enable it we need to add these lines to the config/server.js configuration file:

  cron: {
    enabled: true,
    tasks: cronTasks,
  },
```

so the final file will look something like this:
```jsvascript
const cronTasks = require('./cron-tasks')

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  host: env('HOST', '0.0.0.0'),
  port: env.int('PORT', 1337),
  app: {
    keys: env.array('APP_KEYS'),
  },
  cron: {
    enabled: true,
    tasks: cronTasks,
  },
})
```

then we need to add the `config/cron-tasks.js` file that will we something like this:
```javascript
module.exports = {
  '* 2 * * *': () => {
    strapi.service('api::season.season').getSeasons()
  },
}
```

Of course the cron expression must be customized to your needs.

That's all.

If you have any suggestion let me know in the comments below.

Bye