How do I Loop through a multi-value People Field or Lookup field in SharePoint 2013 designer using REST

Question

I have a multi-valued people picker and a multi-valued Lookup field that I need to read all the entries in a 2013 workflow. I know how to create a workflow that retrieves the data and iterate through each list item using REST and a dictionary. Given I'm iterating through each item, I need to now iterate through each multi-valued field.

In the past, I have done this using a loop iterator and a second dictionary entry representing the data in the multi-valued field, but I don't have access to this code anymore. I can use a loop and use the find function parsing through my responseContent, but this is not reliable since my reponseContent will have multiple records in it and I know it can be done using a second dictionary entry.

My REST query is:

_api/lists/GetByTitle('EmailSetup')/Items?$select=EmailYN,EmailSubject,EmailBody,EmailTo/EMail,Emailcc/EMail,EmailToWorkflowPerson/Title,EmailccWorkflowPersons/Title&$filter=(Title%20eq%20%27BSM%20Review%27)%20and%20(WorkflowName%20eq%20%27ProcessBSMRequests%27)&$expand=EmailTo,Emailcc,EmailToWorkflowPerson,EmailccWorkflowPersons

Where my multi-valued fields are the Emailcc and EmailccWorkflowPerson, (people picker and lookup respectively).

I have my first dictionary as the following data structure that captures the requestHeaders

Accept        String  application/json;odata=verbose
Content-Type  String  application/json;odata=verbose

In my first loop I get all my attributes, but not certain how to get the multi-valued fields Emailcc and EmailccWorkflowPersons.

Yes, I can parse through my response, but there's a better way to somehow put these multi-value fields into a structure and then loop through these.

What I need is what is that structure (dictionary) and how do you get the data into that structure and then how do you loop through that structure.

The final result should be of the sort (psuedocode) where Index is which record I am on and Index2 is which multi-value I am on.

d/results([%Varaible: Index%])/Emailcc/Email[%Variable: Index2%])xxx

Answer 1

With a lot of debugging I have gotten half my answer and maybe someone can help me with the other half. The data structure of the data when it comes back via the REST looks like (some masking of our own data):

responseContent={"d":{"results":[{
"__metadata":{"id":"Web\/Lists(guid'c7bb71c8-a9dd-495f-aa5f-4dcacdf8db5c')\/Items(1)","uri":"https:\/\/xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxx\/hc\/teams\/MES\/_api\/Web\/Lists(guid'c7bb71c8-a9dd-495f-aa5f-4dcacdf8db5c')\/Items(1)","etag":"\"13\"","type":"SP.Data.EmailSetupListItem"},
"EmailTo":{"__metadata":{"id":"b493bee4-ec1a-4b76-a028-11766bdb7e5b","type":"SP.Data.UserInfoItem"},"EMail":"xyxee.dyff@homeward.com"},
"EmailToWorkflowPerson":{"__deferred":{"uri":"https:\/ \/xxxxx.xxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xxx\/hc\/teams\/MES\/_api\/Web\/Lists(guid'c7bb71c8-a9dd-495f-aa5f-4dcacdf8db5c')\/Items(1)\/EmailToWorkflowPerson"}},
"Emailcc":{"results":[{"__metadata":{"id":"790a690a-515b-4d07-bba3-73bf325fbbed","type":"SP.Data.UserInfoIt em"},"EMail":"xyxee.dyffns1@homeward.com"},{"__metadata":{"id":"3d77e75c-5fa8-4df6-937c-97e572714843","type":"SP.Data.UserInfoItem"},"EMail":"xyxee.dyffr@homeward.com"}]},
"EmailccWorkflowPersons":{"results":[{"__metadata":{"id":"06582ed9-09 10-4932-9b43-0cfb072942c7","type":"SP.Data.WorkflowPersonsListItem"},"Title":"Assistant Administrator"},{"__metadata":{"id":"13d03566-1703-4550-a21f-08ea286d4940","type":"SP.Data.WorkflowPersonsListItem"},"Title":"Initiator"}]},
"EmailYN":"No",
"EmailSubject":"BSM Request # %%ID%%",
"EmailBody":"<div class=\"ExternalClass645790473F7D4B62BE6224DD7B93990F\">%%IDLINK%%<br><\/div><div class=\"ExternalClass645790473F7D4B62BE6224DD7B93990F\">and the BSM#&#160;%%ID%%<br><\/div><div class=\"ExternalClass64 5790473F7D4B62BE6224DD7B93990F\"><br><\/div>"
}]}}

I created another dictionary variable, EmailResults just as the first one to store the multi-value emailcc addresses.

Then the following Get:

Get d/results([%variable: Index%)/Emailcc/results from Variable:responseContent (Output to Variable: EmailccResults)

To get the record count, I use Count Items in the EmailccResults

I set my second index to start at zero and loop through the number baseed on the count in EmailccResults. To set my intermediate email address (getting one value at a time from the mult-value People picker).

Get d/results([%variable: Index%)/Emailcc/results(%Variable: Index2%)/EMail from Variable: responseContent (Output to Variable: EmailCc)

then I increment the Index2 variable and go to the next record. This works perfectly.

Now my problem is I have a multi-value Lookup that is included in this query (see what the results are above). I attempt the same logic and I am successfully getting the count, but not the Title fields. My get is:

Get d/results([%variable: Index%)/EmailccWorkflowPersons/results from Variable:responseContent (Output to Variable: EmailccResults)

My actual assignment is:

Get d/results([%variable: Index%)/EmailccWorkflowPersons/results(%Variable: Index2%)/Title from Variable: responseContent (Output to Variable: tmpvar)

** the Lookup works exactly the same way. My problem was that my get above had some blank lines in the text box.