Handling API response when object may or may not be available in response

[Teekay]

Hi all,

I’m using UiPath HTTP API activities for scraping some data.

The API I’m currently working with will not always return the same structure. For example, in about 5% of the cases, a specific property (let’s say “date”) may not be available.

So sometimes the response may be results:

[{name: “xyz”, place: “abc”, date: “123”}]

but sometimes it may be:

[{name: “xyz”, place: “abc”}]

How do I handle this with IF (or anything else)?

I’m getting the “object reference not set to an instance of an object” error. I have tried using the deserialize portion inside an IF block which checks wherther isNothing(object), but same error.

Current implementation pic attached.

Any help appreciated!

[Adrian_Brinas (Adrian Brînaş)]

Maybe, the year variable has not been declared in the data manager palette

[Nishant_Banka1 (Nishant Banka)]

Hi,
I think it’s the ToString method that is throwing the error. Since we are doing a ToString on an object that doesn’t exist
Can you try removing the ToString, and then try?

Thanks,
Nishant

[ppr (Peter Preuss)]

a null check can be done as shown below:

for a more defensive handling the existence of a JSON Property we can do:

we use this often for techniques when setting up generic extraction flows and and calculate existing properties against a list of interested properties

[Teekay]

Brilliant, simple. Works now!