Access full response data from PowerAutomate flow in PowerApps (including errors!)

[pc_avo]

Hi all,

I've searched the forums high and low and not found any help.

I have a PowerApp with various PowerAutomate flows integrated. They are triggered by OnSelect on button elements.

I want to configure the flows to return a 200 status code with payload data (JSON) if the flow is successful. However, if a problem occurs in the flow, it should return an error code (e.g. 404) and ideally also a data payload describing the error. Note I am using the premium "Request-Response" action.

However, the problem appears to be that PowerApps forces its own interpretation of the response from PowerAutomate.

For example, use Set() to receive the flow response:

Set(response,myPowerautomateFlow.Run())

If the flow responds with status code 404, the variable is set to BOOLEAN false. There appears to be no way to access the rest of the response, which I can view in Monitoring as shown below (e.g. data.response.body.error.innerError is what I would like to access!):

{
  "status": 404,
  ...
  "data": {
    "context": {
      ...
      }
    },
    "request": {
      ...
      "method": "POST",
      "headers": {
        ...
      },
      "body": {
        ...
      }
    },
    "response": {
      "duration": 1459,
      "size": 251,
      "status": 404,
      "headers": {
        ...
      },
      "body": {
        "error": {
          "code": 404,
          "source": ...,
          "clientRequestId": ...,
          "message": "The response is not in a JSON format.",
          "innerError": "Failed to get API token"
        }
      },
      "responseType": "text"
    },
...

If the flow responds with status code 200 and JSON data in the payload, the variable is a table containing the JSON data. Just as expected, business as normal.

OK, so let's try using ClearCollect() instead of Set().

ClearCollect(collection,myPowerautomateFlow.Run())

If the flow responds with 200, then the collection is filled with the data as expected. This is also business as normal, nothing new here.

If the flow responds with 404, Monitoring reports that the ClearCollect was successful and "1 rows collected.", however, viewing the collection under variables shows it having only one empty entry. Again, there is no way to access the extended information that the Flow sends.

So is my assumption correct that PowerApps does not make the full response from PowerAutomate available specifically in the case that the flow returns something other than a success (2xx) status code? Or am I missing something?

(Happy to provide more details of the PowerAutomate flows and response actions, didn't want to overload this post though.)

[Devvj]

@pc_avo 

Hi,
do you get the same behavior if you use the "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow"-trigger, instead of the Request-Response one?

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[pc_avo]

Hi,

Using "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow" means that I receive the "raw" data from the flow in its entirety.

That has the advantage that I can access the status code easily: variable.statuscode

However, the PowerApp does not receive a JSON object which can be saved into a collection. Instead I have the JSON as a text string with a lot of escaped quotation marks...

Is there a reasonable way to convert the received string into a table/collection in PowerApps? Then this could be a potential workaround with the added advantage of not required the premium action.

[Devvj]

Hi,
you can use the ParseJSON() (needs to be turned on in settings, since its a experemental feature).

To parse the raw JSON into a Table

Table(ParseJSON(<Raw JSON String Here>))

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[pc_avo]

Ok, I can't get that working just yet, but using ParseJSON() etc. is another topic, I will google and search the forums.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to address my initial question/assumption: PowerApps is fundamentally handling the response from "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow" and "Request-Response" differently, and masking a lot of the data from "Request-Response".

Is that really the case?

[pc_avo]

Seems like ParseJSON() has a big downside - it doesn't know the JSON schema.

This page suggests looping over the Table(ParseJSON(<json string>)) as follows:

ClearCollect(
    colCarInventory,
    ForAll(
        Table(ParseJSON(GetCarInventorySPListItems.Run().result).body),
        {
            Year: Value(Value.Year),
            Make: Text(Value.Make),
            Model: Text(Value.Model),
            Sold: Boolean(Value.Sold),
            'Purchase Date': DateValue(Value.'Purchase Date')
        }
    )
)

 That's not practical for real life JSON schemas.

[pc_avo]

I'm going to switch to the workaround using the "Respond to a PowerApp or Flow" action and leave this question unsolved for the time-being in case anyone else wants to jump in and address the original point.

@Devvjmany thanks for the input.

For completeness, I just want to mention that I ended up implementing the (apparently faster) method described here to type the parsed JSON, using AddColumns() instead of ForAll():

Collect(
  colDaneOut,
  DropColumns (
    AddColumns(Table(ParseJSON(varJson)),
      "PropertyText", Text(ThisRecord.Value.PropertyText),
      "PropertyNumber", Value(ThisRecord.Value.PropertyNumber)
    ),
  "Value")
)