What is difference between value and body from Get Items?

[SamBasso]

Stupid question (please ignore if too stupid);

What is the difference between value List of Items and body List of Items when performing a Get Items action?  What does each return?

[linxiao · Accepted solution]

Basically the Get items action initiates a HTTP request to server to get items from SharePoint. And a JSON would response from server:

You can see the body is the whole HTTP response body and the value is the actual value inside the body.

[SamBasso]

Thank you @linxiao makes sense now..

[smsdavis]

That might make sense to someone who writes in JSON but for the average user without that knowledge that answer was completely meaningless.  

Please explain in simpler terms.  

I'm trying to understand what the difference is in 

List of Items

Value - Item   and

value (List of Items)

I'm trying to do something simple.  Create an event in Google Calendar if a Sharepoint Event is created.  But when I put in a condition to test and make sure the event doesn't already exist it demands I put that condition into a loop.  I don't want a dang loop.  I want to make one item.  

It runs but it wants to create like 2 dozen of each item.  It seems to be stuck in some endless loop.

I think it's that stupid thing it keeps putting in the Loop and without understanding value, List of Items, and Value - Items I don't know what should be in the stupid loop.

Will Microsoft EVER make some kind of user documentation for Flow?  Seriously.  It's been several years and all you can do is try something and fail 100 times, spend hours googling and reading from other people's failures until you stumble upon something that works.  

This was the closest post to explaining those items and it assumes you understand JSON.  

[Nixar]

 Hi,

The output of body is an object as they are inside curly braces and output of value is value is an array as they are in square braces. This is json syntax. In Power automate many actions accept array so we have to use Value from get items as their inputs.

{ ...
 body{
  value [
   {1}
   {2}
   {3}
  ....
  ]
 }
}

[Willthmas1221]

JSON is probably the easiest language to understand. It will probably take you 15-60 mins to get a good enough understanding to use power automate much better.

[Anonymous]

Hi @Willthmas1221 .

I have noticed that I struggle too much without knowledge of JSON.

Would you be able to recommend the best way to quickly gain the understanding?

If there is some sort of a crush course. That would be extremely useful.

[SP20]

Please do share the training that helped you out @Willthmas1221 
I like @Anonymous would like to learn JSON quickly and doing so in less than an hour is enticing!

[Willthmas1221]

Don't have any material in particular. @SP20 @Anonymous 

The key thing to note is that JSON is made up of key value pairs (also known as objects) and arrays.

A key value pair looks like this...

{"Key":"Value"}

An array looks like this...

[1,2,3,4,5]

A key value pair, containing an array as the value looks like this...

{
  "Person": [
    "Jim",
    "John",
    "Joseph"
  ]
}

Values within JSON can have different types i.e. strings and integers (take note of the " " around the string, the integer does not have this):

{
  "Name": "John",
  "Age": 32
}

JSON objects can be nested within other objects. For example:

{
  "Person": [
    {
      "Name": "Jim",
      "Age": 32
    },
    {
      "Name": "John",
      "Age": 24
    },
    {
      "Name": "Joseph",
      "Age": 16
    }
  ]
}

In order for Power Automate to understand JSON, it needs to be parsed (done by default with a lot of connectors). To parse JSON, you need to define a schema (essentially instructions detailing how the JSON is structured). An example JSON schema for the above code snippet can be seen below:

{
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "Person": {
            "type": "array",
            "items": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                    "Name": {
                        "type": "string"
                    },
                    "Age": {
                        "type": "integer"
                    }
                },
                "required": [
                    "Name",
                    "Age"
                ]
            }
        }
    }
}

 
Generally, you do not need to learn how to write JSON schema from scratch, Power Automate has a JSON schema generator you can use in the 'Parse JSON' action by copying in your example JSON. It is useful to understand the general theory so you are able to change required fields or field types whereby the schema generator is not 100 percent accurate. The more complex the problem, the more JSON schema you will be required to write.

In regards to the body vs value debate, the body is the entire JSON response returned from the SharePoint API request (containing a lot of crap you likely don't need). The Value is the array of all the list items returned containing the information you likely need. The body is the entire JSON object, the value is an array within the body object.

[DreBlack]

...

[DreBlack]

This is an awesome, simplified approach/explanation which builds upon itself. For a beginner like me, this helps a ton. Thank you!