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JavaScript functions return [object Object] instead of text - Power Automate Desktop

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Posted on by BranzinoAlForno

So,

I'm pretty new with Power Automate Desktop. I started using it for 3 days now and I was doing a little experiment: I wanted to get all the name of games the are stored on the website https://www.esrb.org/ .
I tried getting the name with a lot of JavaScript function (because somehow the "extract data" is broken on this website) but I keep getting this thing where I can't get the correct value.

Screenshot 2023-02-21 015113.png

I really don't know what I am doing wrong.
As shown in the image below, I also tested the JS scripts on the console and they work fine.

Screenshot 2023-02-21 015519.png

How can I solve it?

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Kyle_Con 3 on at

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I'm also having the same problem...

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Pavel_NaNoi 1,074 on at

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Try this, worked for me, return document.querySelector("#results > div:nth-child(1) > div.heading > h2 > a").textContent;
(credit to ChatGPT for this one)

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ValRab 7 on at

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Still happening, I'm guessing it's one of the lastest updates?

Tried casting it to string, passing it to a variable creating a dom component and retrieving it's textContent and innerText, no luck

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MARKYQD 4 on at

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https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/object-object-in-javascript-meaning-in-js/

Checkout this post!

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ValRab 7 on at

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Although this might some people the current problem is in PAD not in the code, you can even try to return with something like

return 'test'

And it will return [object Object]

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MARKYQD 4 on at

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Maybe it's because you're occupying PA variables. I solved the problem by adding quotation marks in the variable names

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ValRab 7 on at

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Long story short: The [object Object] might be returned if the code has an error of any kind, in my case I was using the wrong browser instance so It wasn't finding the window variables I was looking for.

Maybe the action should be able to catch those kind of errors instead of leaving us in the dark.

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waynewalls 74 on at

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Debugging the JavaScript submitted to PAD's Run JavaScript action is occasionally a real pain-point. That can be especially true when the returned value is null or undefined.

I've started to include something like the following in almost all my JavaScript submitted through PAD's action:
if (variable_to_be_returned == null){ variable_to_be_returned = "null or undefined" }
return variable_to_be_returned;
This detects both null and undefined because:
null == undefined
This at least separates out when you are getting null or undefined from some other object--which is often useful for me.

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eshaani 4 on at

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A workaround that worked for me was to set a global variable and just separate the return value into it's own function.

function ExecuteScript() { function doSomethingElse(res) { asdf = res return asdf } fetch("https://1.1.1.1/cdn-cgi/trace") .then(function (result) { // If using a full function expression: return the promise return result.text() }) .then((newResult) => doSomethingElse(newResult)) .catch((error) => console.error(error)); }
function ExecuteScript() { return window.asdf; }

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Mohamed_Rila 2 on at

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@BranzinoAlForno ,
Try by using JSON.stringify(JSONResponse);

Change the JSONResponse value to the value that you're trying to return. It'll work, If not means ping me so that we can try with different approach.

Hope this solution helps you!
If your problem is solved then please change the state to solved.

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