Best Practice for handling empty API response

[karimm]

Hi All

I have several queries that import data from SAAS systems via REST APIs.

I call the API giving a query/filter as input, and parse the API response via several steps (some columns return as records/lists). The final result is a table of X columns.

The query usually looks like this:

- Create the query

- Call API

- Expand Field 1

- Expand Field 2

.

.

- Expand Field n

In some scenarios, the API response is empty based on the given response. So the query fails on the first Expand step saying "the column 1 of the table wasn't found".

I would like the query not to fail when I try to expand the fields, and to have an empty table eventually with same X columns.

What would be the best practice for writing a more resilient query?

Thank you

[lbendlin]

@karimm First thing to do is to enable ManualErrorHandling in your Web.Contents() call.  After that you will want to utilize the built in try ... otherwise ...  feature in Power Query.