Orphan Field Reference Checker for Merged JSON Batches

How it works

1. 1.Manual Trigger fires with an empty item
2. 2.Emit Merged Sample Batch produces the demo payload: four merged items and six reference paths
3. 3.Scan Field References resolves each dotted path per item and emits one status record per reference
4. 4.Normalize Reference Record adds referenceLabel and pathDepth while keeping all other fields
5. 5.Is Reference Broken routes broken references to output 0 and healthy ones to output 1
6. 6.Separate NoOp nodes feed Merge append input 0 and input 1
7. 7.Build Orphan Reference Report aggregates all records into a single report item
8. 8.Three sticky notes document input, scan and report stages

Use cases

• Audit merged output before writing downstream $json expressions
• Detect fields present in only some merged items to prevent silent empty values
• Compare schema compatibility of two sources joined by Merge
• Document broken paths for an automation team

Requirements

• n8n 2.45.7 or newer
• Only manualTrigger, code, set, if, merge, noOp and stickyNote nodes
• No credentials and no network access
• For real input: one item containing mergedItems and references

Setup and testing in n8n

1. Import the JSON and click Execute Workflow
2. Confirm the report shows 6 references, 2 healthy, 4 broken
3. Check missingIndexes: customer.email missing at 1, totals.net at 2, source at 3, customer.phone in all items
4. Happy path: add the missing fields to every item, brokenCount becomes 0 and safeToBuildExpressions true
5. Edge case: set mergedItems or references to an empty array and verify a safe report with no error
6. Empty-value case: the blank orderId appears in emptyValueWarnings, not as broken

Service Value

Ready-made workflow template for automation delivery and service execution.