Json Parse

Description

During the execution of a flow, unstructured data can be received from triggers and actions. Think for example the output of the Webhook trigger, the Content property of the output of the Rest Endpoint action. This data (or part of it) can be provided to the following steps, but it is often difficult to write the correct data reference template. By adding the Json Parse action to the flow, we can attach a Json schema to unstructured data, and this way we can get design support when referring to this data.

There is no performance penalty by adding this to the flow, it only has design time impact.

Details

In the example below a simple flow is presented, where data is provided via the webhook trigger. On the next flow the Flow designer only allows us to select the whole content of the input, {{step0}}. Should we like to only use a subset of the data received, we would need to type in manually the desired expression: {{step0:Address.Street}}.

We can improve the design time experience by adding a Json Parse action to the flow and providing a Json Schema. After this, the Flow designer will be able to help us, providing more details, as shown below.

Usage

The Json schema that describes the data can be provided as Content, when we need to enter the Schema requested by the Flow designer, or can be provided as a link, entering an Uri where the required schema can be read.

NOTE Currently we only support the draft 4 version of the Json Schema

NOTE After release v2020.03.12 ParsedContent property must be referenced before referencing JSON

We need to link the Content property of the Json Parse action to the output (or property of the output) of a trigger / action previously defined in the flow.