How to Check If an array Contains a Value using Power Automate?

When working with Power Automate, there will be situations where we need to check if an array contains a specific value or a partial text.

For this, Power Automate has a function named contains() function to check whether an array or a string contains a specific value.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to check if an array contains a specific value using the Power Automate contains() function and show how to check if an array contains a certain string with the filter array action in Power Automate.

Power Automate Array Contains() Function

Power Automate contains() function will check if an array or string contains a partial text or a specific element.

The output returned will be ‘true‘ if the array or string contains a specific element; else, it will return as ‘false.’

Power Automate contains() function is case-sensitive; it only checks for the exact match of an element.

Input	Function	Output
‘Lidia’, ‘Henrietta’	contains(“Lidia”,”Henrietta”),’Lidia’	true
‘Lidia’, ‘Henrietta’	contains(“Lidia”,”Henrietta”),’Lidia Holloway’	false

Power Automate Check if an Array Contains a Value using contains() function

Here, I will discuss how to check whether an array contains a specific element by using the Power Automate contains() function.

I have explained the Power Automate contains() function in the above section.

Example:

Input	Expression	output
[“California”,”Florida”,”Texas”]	contains([“California”,”Floria”,”Texas”],’Florida’)	true

Check the below-mentioned steps:

1. Navigate to the Power Automate home page and click “+Create” -> Select “Instant cloud flow. ” Then, set the flow name, choose “Manually trigger a flow,” and click on the Create button.

2. Take a new step as the Initialize variable flow action to initialize the values of an array.

Configure the below parameters:

• Name: Set a name for an initialized variable.
• Type: Select datatype as ‘Array’.
• Value: Here, I have taken the below-shown values.

3. Add a Compose flow action to include the contains() expression to check whether the array has a specific element or not.

Inputs: Provide the below-given expression in it.

contains(variables('United States'),'Florida')

4. Once the flow is ready. Save it and Test it Manually. Click on Runflow.

5. If the array contains a given element, the output will be returned as ‘true‘ as shown below:

This is how to use the Power Automate contains() function to check whether the array contains a specific value.

Check if an array contains a specific value in Power Automate using Filter Array

Let’s see how to check if the array contains a specific value from the Power Automate filter array action.

Scenario:

The image below shows a SharePoint list with a Country column [Single line of text].

I wanted to check whether the Country column contains a specific country [Egypt] or not.

Go through the below steps:

1. Take Manually trigger a flow trigger.
2. Next, add the ‘Get items‘ flow action to retrieve all the items from a SharePoint list. Select the Site Address and List Name.

3. Take an ‘Initialize Variable‘ flow action. Set a Name for a variable and datatype as ‘Array.’

4. After that, add Append to array variable flow action. Set the below details:

• Name: Choose a name from the drop-down.
• Value: Select the ‘Country‘ column from dynamic content.

Then, For each loop will be added automatically.

5. Take a ‘Filter array‘ flow action. Provide the below details:

• From: Take the value of a variable[Countries]
• Filter query: Give the below expression

 @contains(@{item()},'Egypt')                             

6. Now save and test the flow. Test it manually.

7. When the flow runs successfully, open the filter array and check whether the array contains a specific element or not.

Refer to the image below:

This is how to check if an array contains a specific value in the Power Automate filter array action.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial helped you to check if an array contains a specific value or not using Power Automate.

Here, I have described two methods to check if the array contains a value in Power Automate.

• By using Power Automate contains() function
• Through Power Automate Filter array action

You may also like the following tutorials:

• Power Automate Array Variable
• How to use append to string variable action in Power Automate?
• Power Automate Set Variable
• How to Use Power Automate dayOfWeek Function?
• Power Automate String Functions