Updating Publication List from DE using SSJS

Question

I am not an expert in SSJS. But after going through various posts I come up with the below code. I trying to create code in which I am reading data from DE and adding subscribers into Publication List.

Below SSJS code is running successfully but no record is adding. Any help here on fix?

<script runat="server">    
    Platform.Load("core","1.1.1");
    
    var data = DataExtension.Init("publist");

    var prox = new Script.Util.WSProxy();

if(data){ 
          for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++){ 

    var sub = {
        EmailAddress: data[i]["EmailAddress"],
        SubscriberKey: data[i]["SubscriberKey"],
        Lists: [{
            ID: '2146',
            Status: 'Active'
        }]
    };
    var options = { 
        SaveOptions: [{
          PropertyName: "*",
          SaveAction: "UpdateAdd"
        }]
    };

    var resp = prox.createItem("Subscriber", sub, options);
    
    Write("Response: " + Stringify(resp));
}
}

</script>

Answer 1

You're not retrieving any rows from the Data Extension you've initialized, so there's nothing to loop around. See the top of the SSJS Core code below for an example of getting "data" from your Data Extension that you could iterate through.

If this is part of something you're doing regularly, although you can do this with WSProxy, I'd recommend using Core SSJS functions to do this. Although Salesforce doesn't monitor API usage actively, there's no reason to assume that they won't see this as an area that could be monetized in the future.

To do what you're attempting to do with WSProxy using standard Core functions, you could do something similar to this:

<script runat="server">    
    Platform.Load("core","1");
    
    var de = DataExtension.Init("publist");
    var data = de.Rows.Retrieve();

    if(data){ 
          for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++){ 
              var sub = {
                  "EmailAddress": data[i]["EmailAddress"],
                  "SubscriberKey": data[i]["SubscriberKey"],
                  "Lists": [{
                      "Status": "Active",
                      "ID": 2146,
                      "Action": "Upsert"
                  }]
              };

              var subObj = Subscriber.Init(sub.SubscriberKey);
              var status = subObj.Upsert(sub);
          } //data.length
    } //if(data)
</script>

If you're dealing with a very large number of records (more than a few), SSJS just isn't the way to do this at all. It won't scale to any reasonable volume, even with WSProxy's ability to page through batches of 2.5K records (not implemented in your example). The way to go is SQL and Automation Studio:

1. Create a new scheduled Automation

2. Create a Data Extension to hold the results of the query below

3. Create a Query Activity with similar code to get the records from your Data Extension:

    SELECT
        SubscriberKey AS [Subscriber Key],
        EmailAddress AS [Email Address],
        'Active' AS [Status]
    FROM
        publistDE
   

4. Create a Data Extension Extract Activity to export the contents of your results DE

5. Create a File Transfer Activity to move the extracted data to the Enhanced FTP

6. Create an Import File Activity to import the file in the Enhanced FTP to your Publication List

7. Save and Run Once the Automation