(ESTIMATION TIME: 1 MINUTES)
So here I am working on another PowerApps app. My app should work across different tenants so I’m using Flow HTTP request/response for data sync purposes. For a storage I’m using an excel file on my OneDrive for Business.
One of my Flow use cases to cover was to get JSON data from HTTP request and:
- if row exists – update it
- if row doesn’t exist – create a new one
I’ve quickly searched the web looking for most recommended approach and found this article where a promoted solution suggest to:
- Get all rows from an excel file
- Filter all rows looking for a specific one
- Using condition action split a flow to “have been found” and “haven’t been found” paths
And this is actually a quite good approach…unless there is nothing much happening after a conditional split. For better understanding consider following:
- Get all rows from an excel file
- Filter all rows looking for a specific one
- Conditional split:
- Have been found -> do action A -> finish
- Have been found -> do action B -> finish
Better approach (in specific cases)
Above bullet point list describe a pretty simple scenario but represents exactly my need. And because of its simplicity I was wondering “do I really need to get ALL rows only to find out if there is the one I’m looking for?”. The answer was obvious: “no, I don’t”.
The trick is to use error handling capability of Microsoft Flow along with Termination action with “Succeeded” status.
Result when my HTTP trigger received a row guid that does not exist:
I hope you find this short article helpful in your Flow implementations.
