Turning JSON data into Collections in PowerApps

After years of futzing about w/ workarounds and hacks, the new ParseJSON() function in Power Apps has given us a glimpse of how this will work for us going forward.  The ability to push data out to other applications has been possible for awhile now, but our ability to consume JSON back into Power Apps easily has eluded most app builders.

While this function is still in the Experimental branch of PowerApps, there is no doubt that some form of this will go forward.  The benefits are massive and this changes everything about how we deploy large-scale applications.

Not to mention the possible security benefits

Stripping HTML tags from SharePoint data at runtime

If you find yourself in a situation where "somebody" imported a bunch of SharePoint data that included what SharePoint decided had some HTML tags in it, then you might wind up with a multiline text field that has whatever value you care about surrounded with some very unique "<div></div>" tags.  Everything might look fine when you're glancing at your original list, but when you query the field you see something like:

<div class="ExternalClassCA06509747B841D08AA4020D3A431C1E">Some Value</div>

And don't think that SharePoint will be nice and use the same tag within that <div> tag.  It will not.  So if you're going to do any manipulation/comparison on that within your PowerApp (like looking for matching values), you're going to need to get rid of that garbage.

While it is of course always better to try and fix the data, if you're in a situation where you don't control it or cannot do it easily (say when you're dealing w/ hundreds of thousands of rows), then it is time to manipulate this within your app.