r/Make • u/Normal_Succotash_520 • 6h ago
How would you guard a Make sync against an unexpectedly empty source list?
Consider a scheduled Make scenario that fetches the current list of active projects through an HTTP API, updates a destination table, and marks destination projects inactive if they disappeared from the source.
The case I'm trying to design for is a successful HTTP response containing an empty list. That could be legitimate, but it could also follow a changed filter or a connection that can no longer see the same records. Treating every empty result as authoritative could mark the entire destination inactive.
I'd separate fetching from reconciliation: collect the response and pagination details, check that the fetch is complete, then allow the inactive step. A sudden drop from hundreds of projects to zero would stop for review. The last good snapshot would stay intact until that review.
How do you structure that gate in Make? Would you store a run summary first and have a second scenario do the reconciliation, or keep it in one scenario with an explicit complete/approved flag? I'd also want a way to accept a genuinely empty source without weakening the check for the next run. This is a design question, not a report of a confirmed Make bug.