How to build a Polling Loop?

[Sebastian_Irmer]

Hi everyone,

I’m building a workflow where I need to wait for an external API (specifically D-ID) to finish processing a video. The API returns a status field, which eventually becomes "done" once the video is ready. Until then, it returns "created" or "pending".

I’d like to create a loop that checks the video status every 5 seconds and continues the workflow only when the status equals "done".

As you can see in my workflow, I’m trying to create a loop using an IF node and a Wait node that repeatedly calls get_video and checks whether the video is already finished.

I’m using a Merge node to reconnect the loop, but I have a feeling that this might not be the right approach. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a better way.

I’m still quite new to n8n, so I’m always happy to learn new tricks from the pros here in the n8n community.

Thanks for your time.

[slim-python]

you don’t need merge, simple connect the false branch to http block

[Sebastian_Irmer]

Thy, Ill try that.

[slim-python]

If that works, you can mark my answer as solution

[darrell_tw]

I guess the wait need to connect to set field _ video_id

Connecting to get_video directly. It won’t get the data from video_id node.

If you are using {{ $json.video_id }} something like this in the get_video node.

[Sebastian_Irmer]

It worked very well. Thank you all for your advice!