How to avoid unneccessary Apply to Each loop?

[Kpreeti1256]

Hi Community Members,

I am looking for a way that can help me avoid usage of multiple Apply to Each loops in my Flow. I am passing an input from Canvas App to Flow, which is the name. I want to get the items related to that name from my SP list. There is only 1 record that matches the passed name but when I use "Get Items" action and pass the Filter Query. It is returning one record but when I try to use this value, the action moves inside an Apply to Each loop.

Since I have to use this record at multiple places, I do not want to have multiple Apply to Each loops operating on a single record. Has anyone faced something like this before? I will be happy to get your inputs.

Thanks in advance!

[MattWeston365 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kpreeti1256 I recently published a blog which lightly covered what you're trying to do.

https://blog.mattweston365.com/2019/12/my-big-5-tips-for-power-automate.html

Scroll down (or read ;)) down to the section "3. Don't loop unless you really need to"

Let me know if you need any further help from this

[yashag2255 · Accepted solution]

Hey @Kpreeti1256 

You can use the First() function or the arrayname[0] to get the first item from the returned list for this one. 

Hope this Helps!

If this reply has answered your question or solved your issue, please mark this question as answered. Answered questions helps users in the future who may have the same issue or question quickly find a resolution via search. If you liked my response, please consider giving it a thumbs up. THANKS!

[eliotcole]

Just to get specific on this, as Matt's array is one from a built in function.

If you're working with unlabeled Arrays, such as if you were to create an array by splitting a string using the split function in expressions ... then you can just remove the ['value'] part of this.

This is basically the second suggestion that @yashag2255 makes below.

-----

To map this out for others that might end up here in the future.

1. Let's say you have this text in Compose:
   one,two,three,four
2. Using split you create an array variable, called "arrayVAR":
   split(outputs('Compose'), ',')
3. You also have "Parse_JSON" that runs on the arrayVAR output, based on this output:
   [ "one", "two", "three", "four" ]
4. Then to get the second value there, "two", you would simply run this expression:
   body('Parse_JSON')?[1]