Power Automate JSON Arrays: Fun, Practical Challenges to Boost Your Skills

In this video, I guide you through a series of fun challenges designed to elevate your Power Automate skills, specifically focusing on manipulating JSON arrays and objects. Whether you're just getting started or looking to master advanced techniques, this tutorial has something for everyone.

You'll learn how to use actions like Select, Filter Array, and Compose, while also diving into expressions such as addProperty, Join, XML, and XPath. We'll tackle five practical scenarios: creating a semicolon-separated list of emails, adding new properties to arrays, summing and analyzing age data, counting values by gender, and comparing arrays to identify missing responses. Each challenge is broken down step-by-step, and you can follow along using the downloadable flow linked below.

Not only will you get hands-on experience with these common use cases, but you'll also gain insights into more advanced Power Automate techniques that go beyond simple Apply to Each loops. These are fun challenges that will really get you thinking and help you sharpen your skills.

Download the sample flow, try out the challenges, and become an array expert! Don’t forget to share your progress and what you've learned on social media. If you find this video helpful, please like, subscribe, and check out more content on JSON in Power Automate.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro and Explanation of Challenges
02:19 Create Semi Colon Separated List
04:51 Add New Property to Array
07:39 Sum Ages and Retrieve Max/Min Values
11:50 Summarize Number of Male/Female People
14:15 Compare Arrays to Determine Missing Responses
18:00 Outro - Summary

Resources:

#JSON #Arrays #Objects #PowerAutomate

[ukm]

Nice little workout!

Did it during a lunch break, so I went for speed rather than 'best' ... which meant I looped where I could have xpath()'d ... but quick and dirty got it done!

Exercise five is satisfying as it is deceptively simple ... I can see a lot of folks tripping over that one!

[CarlSohns]

Great real world use case tutorial and great presentation. Thanks Damien!

[GarryWatson]

Thank you Damien, clear, swift and concise. Keep it up.

[sprreddy]

Thank you. Greatly appreciate the video. Very helpful!

[dougydoe]

Great Stuff! This was extremely insightful. Learnt some new techniques I could use. Thanks for sharing.

[yannis]

Great Great content and brilliant presentation. Suddenly, arrays do not seem that intimidating

[PhilPhilUtube]

This tutorial is gold! If you consolidate such powerful techniques into an Udemy course, I will immediately enrol it without thinking twice. Thank you so much Damien for bringing us the insights about the Power Automate array

[TheCarterGaming]

I need some videos on how to deal with nested arrays within a object…. Like a list of servers that has their hostname, ip address, location, and array of installed software.

[navarrocloud]

Great content. Love using xpath and didn't know you can add a property using a Select 🤯.

[emmanuelmaceda]

Thanks for sharing! Love your vids/blog posts on applying/use of expressions in Power Automate. Simply much more efficient and faster. Cheers!

[GaryCarmen]

Only just seen this video, but really useful techniques. As always, some great insights that you share Damien

[SeanAstro]

I never considered using XPath! Suggestion and a Question - I think throwing into the video title key words like "...Object Techniques - Sum, Max, Min" may increase viewer count cause those terms would've caught my eye. I'm actually trying to find a good GroupBy with a Count without using ApplyToEach. My data looks like this:

[{Title: "Sorcerers Stone"}, {Title: "Chamber of Secrets"}, {Title: "Sorcerers Stone"}]

And I want a print out like this:

[{Title: "Sorcerers Stone", Count: 2}, {Title: "Chamber of Secrets", Count: 1} ]

Any ideas? The old dataverse connector let you group by but the new one doesn't.

[GregDolan]

Great video - love the challenges concept. Thanks for explaining everything and breaking it down so clearly 🔥

[robofski]

Great video, love real world examples of how you can use Power Automate to overcome real challenges!

[Inno]

Thanks! More great stuff. I still haven't solved that odata returns a header, then a body with sev fields and a "value": which this is the array of objects that I'm really trying to get to. :-)

[tylerkolota]

Thanks Damien, I’m really liking these more intermediate & advance level videos.

Also, one more challenge that many might have is converting a stringified JSON array into a proper JSON array.
For example, when pulling in data from a Power App, it will be a string instead of an array of JSON objects.
Currently I use a Select action with From set to…

Split(
Replace(
Replace(
Replace(
triggerBody()?['text_7'],
'[{', '{'
),
'}]', '}'
),
'}, {', '}|#|{'
),
'|#|'
)

And the single box input set to…
JSON(item())

So it preps the string, replaces the stringified object delimiters to avoid in-data comma errors, then splits the string so each array item is a single stringified JSON object, then converts each stringified JSON to regular JSON in the Select.

I’d be interested to see if you or anyone else have a more polished way to do this.

Thanks,

[StephanOnisick]

Nice Job! I've got some more work to duplicate them to make sure I understand. One question how do you differentiate the "Select" action from the "Filter Array" action. It seems the "Filter Array" doesn't do much formatting and provides a more robust filter condition whereas, the "Select" doesn't really filter--it gives you more of a view of just the data you want to see. However, you've shown the "Select" can combine data from other tables or objects.