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Sending File Contents between Child/Parent Flow

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We are working to capture business process details (ie: file location, file naming convention, pdf conversion connector, etc) within a child flow so that we can more easily maintain this subprocess when something changes.

In the Parent Flow, we populate the desired word template: works. Send the contents to the child flow: works which does it's magic and then returns the PDF contents back to the parent to do as it pleases (ie: email the attachment to someone). Everything works fine except I cannot get the returned content to attach to an email nor can I get it to create a physical PDF file (which it can do in the child...just not the returned parent...see child flow). It works perfect in Child...the Parent creates a 4 page PDF as expected BUT it is blank.

This is the Parent Flow

This is the Child Flow - NOTE: The contents passed to the child allow me to create a physical pdf file with no issues.

I have tried returning the content as a file and as text (string).

Any ideas

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Building flows

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Mira Ghaly 11,413 Moderator on at

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@Anonymous

On the child flow you need to return content and content-type separately as below and then reconstruct it on the parent

Child, After the convert File:

Compose Expression:

outputs('Convert_file')?['body']['$content']

Compose 2 Expression:

outputs('Convert_file')?['body']['$content-type']

On the parent reconstruct the file content as below:

Compose - reconstruct the JSON object based on the outputs from the child

{ "$content-type": "@{body('Run_a_Child_Flow')?['content_type']}", "$content": "@{body('Run_a_Child_Flow')?['content']}" }

This worked for me creating the file on the parent , Hope this helps!

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Community Power Pla... on at

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1 more thing

That works! Thank you, however, if I try to put the Compose block that "reconstructs the file" as an object with content and content-type into the Child (instead of reconstructing in the parent) and then return that Compose as a text parameter to the parent...it jumbles up into a mess of ascii type characters (like below). Any idea why it's changing it from

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Community Power Pla... on at

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This is the update putting it in the file and returning to the parent. The individual Composes work great and allow the parent to reconstruct it just like here...BUT if reconstructed in the child and passed back to parent like this, It gets jumbled (portion shown in screenshot above)

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Mira Ghaly 11,413 Moderator on at

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@Anonymous

Yes I have the same that is why you need to re-construct in the parent and this is mainly because of the way variable are passed so by somemeans when you add the compose object to a string it tries to convert it to this strange output, so to keep it working you need to pass separately from child and reconstruct in parent.

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Community Power Pla... on at

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I just wanted to post an update. I FINALLY figured out a way to do it so that I don't have to create extra steps in the parent after it calls the child process. Instead of passing Compose (temp) variables back, I send an object variable. I initialized an object variable called pdfFile and then set the object up using the Compose variables. This works and makes for easier parent usage

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