JSON Parse tool dropping empty arrays

Question

I am getting a response from an API using the download tool.  The response contains some objects that are empty arrays.  These empty arrays are present in the output from the download tool, but once I parse the response using the JSON parse tool, they disappear.  Is there any way I can retain those empty arrays?

pfiskrat · Answer

Still an issue that exists over 3 years later. Forced to use API calls since the SharePoint tools are unreliable - and can't even rely on JSON parse to retain empty arrays. Why am I using Alteryx again?

BrandonB · Answer

This response will be a bit conceptual in nature because I don't have a dataset in front of me, but you could theoretically use multiple summarize tools which group by each array field. Then you could use the append tool to append each group from each summarize to every other group. This would create a combination of every group regardless of whether or not it had an array. You could then join this data back to the original dataset and observe what is falling out of the side of the join and union that with your inner join. This way you would still have the empty arrays they would just have null values in the corresponding columns.