Getting an empty array on Axios GET request - node.js

Question

I'm trying to do a GET request using Axios. The API's response includes several objects that are properly populated. However, one particular object/field is an array that always shows up as an empty array.
Here's the response I get (note the "users" object with the empty array):
{
url: 'https:/<removed>/customers/<removed>/users?number=41442268000',
users: [],
customer: {
url: 'https://<removed>/customers/<removed>',
id: '<removed>',
name: 'CX Customer1'
},
paging: { offset: 0, limit: 2000, count: 0 }
}
The strange thing is that it works perfectly fine when I use Postman to query the exact same resource:
{
"url": "https://<removed>/customers/<removed>/users?number=8013334001",
"users": [
{
"url": "https://<removed>/customers/<removed>/users/<removed>",
"id": "b1703d6a<removed>",
"bwId": "<removed>.webex.com",
"lastName": "One",
"firstName": "Gus1",
"displayName": "Gus1 One",
"type": "USER",
"callerIdLastName": "One",
"callerIdFirstName": "Gus1",
"callerIdNumber": "[phone]",
"numbers": [
{
"external": "[phone]",
"extension": "4001",
"primary": true
}
],
"location": {
"name": "Salt Lake City",
"id": "9a03e3e<removed>",
"url": "https://<removed>/customers/<removed>/locations/<removed>"
}
}
],
"customer": {
"url": "https://<removed>/customers/<removed>",
"id": "4c1ccbe<removed>",
"name": "CX Customer1"
},
"paging": {
"offset": 0,
"limit": 2000,
"count": 1
}
}
As observed in the above Postman response, the "users" array has an object inside of it.
Here's my Node.js code:
function getUsersByTN(customerInfo, userData) {
let rowNumber = 1;
let successCount = 0;
let failureCount = 0;
axios.defaults.headers.common["Authorization"] = `Bearer ${customerInfo.token}`;
console.log('Attempting to find users on Webex Calling using their phone number...');
return new Promise(async (resolve, reject) => {
try {
for (let data of userData) {
rowNumber++;
const phoneNumber = data.TN;
const getUserURL = `https://<removed>/customers/` +
`${customerInfo.customerId}/` +
`users?number=` +
`${phoneNumber}`;
const result = await axios.get(getUserURL);
console.log(result.data);
resolve(result);
}
}
catch (err) {
reject(new Error(err));
}
})
}
I have also tried to replace the async/await format with the more traditional way of using promises, but got the same result:
axios.get(getUserURL)
.then(result => console.log(result.data))
.catch(err => console.log(err));
What am I missing?
Thanks!
-Gus

Answer 1

I found the problem. My input CSV file had users with phone numbers that did not exist. As soon as I updated it with valid/existing phone numbers, it worked as expected.
The thing that threw me off is that the API still replies with a "200 OK" when I provide invalid phone numbers. I was expecting a "404 not found" for invalid numbers, so I didn't even think about checking the numbers.
My first thought was that this was a bug on the API. In other words, I initially thought that the API should reply with a "404 not found". However, as I thought more about this, I realized that a "200 OK" with an empty result is a more appropriate response. That's because a "404" would incorrectly indicate that the API resource could not be found, which would imply that the request was sent to an invalid URL. That's clearly not what we want. Instead, we want to let the application know that it reached a valid API resource, but that no results were found for the provided searched criteria.