Referencing part of an array by element name

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by DragonLord

200

Hi,

I have an array :

[

{

"ExcelColumnName": "First Name",

"MatchingEmployeeColumnName": "Forenames"

{

"ExcelColumnName": "Surname",

"MatchingEmployeeColumnName": "Surname"

{

"ExcelColumnName": "National Insurance Number",

"MatchingEmployeeColumnName": "NINumber"

}

]

i want to be able to reference one of the rows in the array by using the "MatchingEmployeeColumnName" column, to get the "ExcelColumnName" column

example : i want to get the "ExcelColumnName" for the element that contains "NINumber" ..

is this possible in Power Automate?

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (8)

Answers (2)

Sort by

Verified answer

tom_riha 10,187 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (2)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
Hello @DragonLord ,

you can't reference it directly, but you can use the 'Filter array' action to filter only the entry where MatchingEmp... equals a specific NINumber. The output of the 'Filter array' will be a single object where you can extract the NINNumber using an expression, that might look like this:

first(body('Filter_array'))?['ExcelColumnName']

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
DragonLord 200 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

i did try filter. it works. i was hoping for something more dynamic as i would need to identify 88 fields. thats a lot of filters .. lol

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
tom_riha 10,187 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
If you could change the input data format to have all the information as a single object, it would be much easier, you'd just access the specific values:

{ "First Name": "Forenames" "Surname": "Surname" "National Insurance Number": "NINumber" }
<the object>?['First name'] <the object>?['Surname'] <the object>?['National Insurance Number']

But if it must be an array where each property will be a separate object then I have to agree, it'll be a lot of filters.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
DragonLord 200 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

tried that , no success :

The template language expression 'variables('excelTUPEFieldList')?['Surname']' cannot be evaluated because property 'Surname' cannot be selected. Property selection is not supported on values of type 'String'.

{
"First Name": "john",
"Surname": "doe",
"National Insurance Number": "1234"
}

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
tom_riha 10,187 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Did you define that the variable is of type Object? Wasn't it initialised as a string?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
DragonLord 200 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

i changed from a variable to a Compose , and i could reference it.
Just need to create the string object now from the table that returns the rows.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

tom_riha 10,187 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
DragonLord 200 on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

yes, this worked well for me.
learned something new today.

"děkuji a na zdraví" 🙂

Was this reply helpful? Yes No