Microsoft Flow – HTTP – calling webservices, XML vs JSON

Last week I was asked about making a webservice work in Microsoft Flow. We were using the floatrates url to get some XML back with exchange rates.

So I used the following url: http://www.floatrates.com/daily/gbp.xml

This all worked really well and I got quite quickly some XML back but then the trouble started.

I used XPath to get the bit of XML that I was interested in.

[code lang=text]
xpath(xml(body(‘HTTP’),’/channel/items/title’)
[/code]

At first I thought that I got the right data back as I got the right number of items back in my Initialize variable action:

The right number of items yes, but no usable data.  The $content doesn’t look usable anyway.

Then  I tried the json equivalent version of the service and as soon as I started running my flow I know got some json returned by my HTTP action in Flow. So I now started using http://www.floatrates.com/daily/gbp.json instead:

Now all I had to do was use the following Expression:

and I got my exchange rate back. When using Flow it is a lot easier to use the more modern JSON and XML seems to not be handled properly. SO if you have the choice I would recommend JSON.

Pieter Veenstra

Is your business still running on paper trails, sprawling Excel files, or ageing Access databases? There's a better way — and I can show you exactly what it looks like. I'm the Technical Director of Vantage 365, a Microsoft solutions consultancy working with clients across the UK, the Netherlands, and worldwide. For over 30 years I've been turning messy, manual business processes into clean, automated systems that save time, reduce errors, and give teams the visibility they need to make better decisions. You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com