ParseJSON feedback

[JorisdG]

It’s been roughly two months since we released ParseJSON as an experimental feature in Power Apps. A lot of scenarios for makers have been unblocked with this feature, and we’ve seen great uptake even though it’s still considered experimental. We’re anxious to get this out of that experimental status. I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a recent improvement, and address feedback with some of the future plans we have once we take ParseJSON (and untyped objects) out of the experimental phase.

Finally, and most importantly, I’m asking for your feedback. I will elaborate below but if you’re using ParseJSON I would love to hear from you. We’ve seen comparatively low feedback given the amount of usage. This is probably a good sign, but it makes us a little nervous pushing to preview or GA without making sure there aren’t any issues we just haven’t heard about.

Update since experimental launch

You can now use ForAll(), like Index(), directly on an untyped object. A JSON object array such as [ { “id”: 1, “Title”: “One” }, { “id”: 2, “Title”: “Two” } ] would previously require a Table(ParseJSON()) call before going to ForAll. This has the added drawback of resulting in a single-column table with untyped objects, so you would get something like:

ForAll( Table(untypedObject), { id: Value(ThisRecord.Value.id) )

requiring you to use the .Value field on ThisRecord for the single-column table. You can now pass untyped objects directly into ForAll, which no longer creates a single-column table requiring the use of the Value column. So the previous example becomes:

ForAll( untypedObject, { id: Value(ThisRecord.id) )

Feedback so far

The feedback we’ve received so far is positive in that this feature unblocks many scenarios involving JSON. There are two recurring points of feedback we’ve heard from multiple customers:

1. The feature is very “verbose” today due to the requirement of casting every field individually to a specific type. If you set a table of untyped objects as the Items source of a gallery, each use of a field requires Value(), Text() and other casting everywhere you wish to use the fields. For now you can consider using ForAll to type everything into a typed table first, as shown above, making field access easier. Our ultimate goal is to allow you to define your own type schemas and cast the whole JSON to it. We envision this feature to be used with the ParseJSON() function, where you pass in the JSON string as well as the type you defined, and the result of ParseJSON() would then be a typed object as opposed to an untyped object that requires casting. To be clear, we intend to GA ParseJSON with untyped objects first, and add the new typing features later on.

1. Using ParseJSON() with connectors. If a column from a datasource contains a string with JSON, that is easy enough. But we’ve heard of scenarios where makers want to take the whole response message from a connector and manually parse the JSON when the app runs. The connector team is looking to build on top of our work with untyped objects, and beyond that also the previously mentioned type schema definitions to take connectors to a new level. The experimental Dynamic Schema feature is great but is missing some features and flexibility in Power Fx, and we’re starting to address those in Power Fx (with untyped objects and type definitions). There’s some short and long term work going on that I hope you will get to hear about soon.

If you have any feedback or concrete scenarios you’d like to share, I'd love it if you could comment on this thread. I would love to understand how you’re using ParseJSON or trying to use ParseJSON!

[JorisdG]

Yeah I responded to a similar question just a few posts ago in this thread. Repeating here:

we're finishing off a few new features for ParseJSON to make it less verbose and easier (shorter) to write formulas. This should be rolling out hopefully in a few more weeks. We'll likely move to supported preview and ultimately GA in the weeks/months after that. So I expect in mid to late March this will start moving quickly.

[LaelLeeH]

Hi @JorisdG 

Thanks for looking at this.

I tried it, and cannot get it to work my side. But, something I noticed looking at your code, is that it seems your version of Parsejson is returning Typed objects, and that the syntax is way less verbose. I see that you are not required to do the explicit conversion of the fields from untyped to typed data. 

I tried your notation with my nested json, and it failed. So I then tried just a simple ParseJSON without typing and it also failed. So, I guess the question is, is it possible that I somehow have an older/different version of ParseJSON to the version you are using above?

Regards

Lael  

Regards

Lael

[aavakian]

Thank you for the feedback!!

[JorisdG]

The only formula showing in my screenshot is the ForAll, which doesn't require any type conversions. If you're talking about the screenshot of the gallery, each control you see there is explicitly typing the field... like Text(ThisItem.Field1) etc...

[ramzez]

I'm getting the following error message if I'm trying to send an email with the ParseJSON/Untyped feature setting turned on:

"Office365Outlook.sendEmailV2 failed: The data returned in the response is invalid. Response data should be a valid JSON object."

I'm trying to send the email with just a simple code:

Office365Outlook.SendEmailV2(
    varUserSettings.UserEmail,
    "title text",
    "body text"
)

The email is sent regardless of the error message.

[biterbit]

I also have this issue (described in more detail in this post: Office365Outlook errors when ParseJSON and untyped). These runtime errors are also generated by calls to Power Automate flows and the same issue invalidates some uses of IfError() as described in this thread: Solved: Re: IfError error: Untyped objects cannot be used.

[Anonymous]

Also started experiencing this issue with the send an email v2 function in the last 48 hours or so (working fine prior to this). Hoping this can be resolved asap.

[biterbit]

@JorisdG Just wanted to ensure that you were aware of this issue with the ParseJSON and untyped objects feature and conflicts with the Office365Outlook connector and calls to Power Automate flows.

[Zanzaid1]

Thought i was going crazy and it was my flows breaking, but i'm also having this issue with my flows being called. The flow still works, just gives this error each time

[biterbit]

@Zanzaid1 If you look towards the end of this thread, IfError error: Untyped objects cannot be used, you will find the workaround I used for my flows.