How to handle empty JSON response

[SCTdan]

At the bottom of the screenshot, I have a for each loop (which was automatically created) based on the 'customer' output of a JSON response.  That lookup pulls a customer ID based on their email domain.  The issue I'm having is what happens when no customer is found, and I get a blank / null response (see body output on right).  Because the for each loop is predicated on the customer array having something in it, it just gets skipped.

Ideally I just want it to assign a static ID if it doesn't return a customer, but with that for each based on the customer array having something, I'm not sure what the best solution is here.

There will only ever be one customer returned, so I don't think the for each is necessary is it?  Seems like I'm stuck though because I can't move the actions out of there.  Is there a better solution than just recreating those steps without a for each loop?

[v-yuazh-msft]

Hi @SCTdan,

I afraid that you couldn'y move the for each even though only one customer ever be returned.

Best regards,

Alice

[JoshL]

Firstly, you cannot move or delete actions that are currently using or are currently being used by other actions.Work from the bottom and remove the input to the action before trying to move or delete it. Next, you could have a conditional after you pull in the JSON to check the customer information then handle it accordingly. 

@not(empty(items('Apply_to_each')?['Customers']))

OR

@not(empty(items('Apply_to_each')?['CustomerID']))

If the customerID is not empty then go ahead and do what you want. If it is empty then you can populate it yourself with something else. The possibilities are endless. I did a similar thing for a date in my flow. 

🙂

[SCTdan]

Can you show me what yours looks like above that condition?  I can't figure out where to actually put that condition, everywhere I try I get this error:  "The template validation failed: 'The inputs of template action 'Condition_3' at line '1 and column '14342' is invalid. Action 'Apply_to_each' must be a parent 'foreach' scope of action 'Condition_3' to be referenced by 'repeatItems' or 'items' functions.'."

It'll only let me put that in the actual for each loop, which isn't helpful because that gets skipped if there's no data in customers.

Thanks

[JoshL]

What that is saying is that your template for your JSON parsing is incorrect. You may want to regenerate the template. It also says that for your "Condition_3" you're trying to refer to an apply_to_each that the condition isn't inside of. The reason why it allows you to for it in the loop is because the expression is explicity referencing it. 

What I have is a little complicated so there wouldn't be any use in showing you. This might be the solution you're looking for:

Once you have your data. Check it. If it's empty do something with it and if it isn't ditto. 

[SCTdan]

Gotcha.  I was having issues with null values, so I modified the JSON template to accept null values in some cases.  Guessing I need to re-think that part.

Thanks for the input

[SCTdan]

Figured out a workaround that didn't require me to look at JSON this early in the morning.  I initialized a variable with what I want the fallback ID to be.  Then I used the for each to set that variable to the customer ID if anything was returned.  So if there's nothing returned, that gets skipped, but the variable has it's original fallback ID so it continues to run.  It appears to work so far...