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Maintain list items for no-code developers

Maintain list items for no-code developers

By:

Pieter Veenstra

Date:

In this post I will look at how to maintain list items in SharePoint lists. This post is part of my User guide to using the SharePoint REST API in Microsoft Flow for no-code developers series.

Various operations to maintain list items

I will look at the following operations on a list in this post.

  • Get list item details
  • Create a list item

Getting the list item details is easy using the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action. Simply select the Site Address and supply the API URI then supply the body details and a SharePoint coder would be quite happy to create all of this within less than no time. I have found however that no-code developers struggle sometimes.

To make all of this easy for no-coders, I’m going to start by setting some variables.

  • ListName
  • ListItemId
Initialize variables
Initialize variables

Get the item details

First of all you could just use the Get Items action available in Microsoft Flow. But if you want to get to the more advanced options then the Send an HTTP request to SharePoint action might give you some more flexibility.

Get Item details
Get Item details

And when we run the flow the details of my list item are returned:

Get Item Details output
Get Item Details output

Note for code developers: You could run the HTTP request with nometadata rather than verbose as that may simplify the output a bit.

Create a list item

The Create a list item is slightly more complicated than the examples we have looked at so far. We will need two Send Http request to SharePoint actions. As mentioned on the REST API documentation we will need to get the ListItemEntityTypeFullName  first before we can create a list item.

Maintain list items - Create a list Item
Create a list Item

 

Now we can use the Type variable to create a new item

Create a new list item
Create a new list item

FAQs

Can I create list items without using REST APIs in Power Automate?

Yes, you can you the Create item in the SharePoint connector however the REST API makes it easier to control the finer detail. Especially for the more complex fields the REST API might be easier to use.

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. SharePains is not just any blog run by a Microsoft MVP. Have you ever used Try-Catch in Power Automate? The original post about Try-Catch in Power Automate can still be found on this site, https://staging.sharepains.com/2018/02/07/try-catch-finally-in-power-automate-flow/ Or have you ever used the Pieter’s method to avoid variables and speed up your flows? https://staging.sharepains.com/2020/03/11/pieters-method-for-advanced-in-flows/ You can contact me using contact@staging.sharepains.com

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8 responses to “Maintain list items for no-code developers”

  1. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    Hi,

    How is the body(..) expression constructed to capture the ListItemEntityTypeFullName?

    Thanks
    Rob

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Rob,

      The following will work:

      body(‘Send_an_HTTP_request_to_SharePoint’)?[‘d’][‘__metadata’]?[‘type’]

      Note that if you have multiple HTTP requests in your flow then you might have to update the name of the action in the above

      1. Rob Avatar
        Rob

        Hi Peter

        Brilliant, that worked perfectly.

        Thanks.
        Rob

      2. Rob Avatar
        Rob

        Hi Pieter

        It looks like that only allows me to create an item using the default “Title” column. If I try and add a value to the other columns on the list I get a “The property “ColumnName” does not exist on type ‘SP.List’” error. I’ve done a bit of digging and found the ListItemEntityTypeFullName for this list to be “SP.Data.Job_x0020_CardListItem”. If I use that in the body of the “send an http request to sharepoint 2” I can add values to the other columns. I just need to work out now how to get the ListItemEntityTypeFullName from the list programmatically. The intention is this flow will create items on many different sites.

        Thanks for the help
        Rob

      3. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
        Pieter Veenstra

        Hi Rob,

        Sorry, my mistake. You are after this one:

        body(‘Send_an_HTTP_request_to_SharePoint’)[‘d’][‘ListItemEntityTypeFullName’]

      4. Rob Avatar
        Rob

        Perfect! thanks!

  2. Duncan Cooke Avatar
    Duncan Cooke

    Hi Rob, thanks for an informative article. I have run into a 401 unauthorized error and cannot work out what is wrong. I need to strip permissions from a list item and add new permissions(sharepoint group as well as named users). The first http request I send should strip the permissions. This is the uri:
    _api/lists/getByTitle(‘Lead Tracker’)/items(@{triggerBody()?[‘ID’]})/breakroleinheritance(copyRoleAssignments=false,clearSubscopes=true)

    Do you perhaps have any advice on this issue?

    1. Pieter Veenstra Avatar
      Pieter Veenstra

      Hi Duncan,

      If you tried to do the same manually would it work?

      Which type of flow are you running? Scheduled, Manually start or automated?

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