Lesson 7 / 25

IF, Switch and Merge

Route items by conditions and join branches back together.

Decide, then rejoin

IF splits items into a true and a false branch. Switch sends each item to one of several outputs, like a router. Merge joins two branches again, either by position, by matching a key (like a database join) or by appending all items. Items on the unused branch simply do not continue, which is a normal outcome, not an error.

A routing table

A Switch node with rules on a category field. The fallback output catches anything unexpected so no item is silently lost.

Switch on {{ $json.category }}
  billing   -> Create finance ticket
  technical -> Create engineering ticket
  sales     -> Notify sales channel
  fallback  -> Send to a human review queue

Quick check: Why configure a fallback output on a Switch node?

To catch unexpected values so no item is silently lost
Switch cannot run without it
To make workflows slower
To delete the data

Answer

To catch unexpected values so no item is silently lost — Without a fallback, an item matching no rule goes nowhere and nobody notices.