Regular Expression Functions

Overview

This Plug-in exposes Java Regular Expression string manipulation capabilities as Appian Functions. Very useful for validation rules and data manipulation on interactive SAIL forms.

Key Features & Functionality

Datatypes provided:

RegexMatch - has a string field representing the string found, a starting index for the string in the haystack and an ending index for the string in the haystack

Regex Flags supported:

i - case insensitive
g - find all matches
m - multiline search
s - treats the entire string as a single line
u - unicode aware search
x - ignores comments starting with '#' and white spaces
d - enables unix line mode

Functions provided:

regexSearch - Searches for the selected pattern with the specified regex options and returns a list of RegexMatch Datatypes, accepts all regex flags.
regexArraySearchIndexOfFirstMatch - Searches an array for a match and returns the first index of match found
regexMatch - Indicates whether the regular expression finds a match in the input string, accepts all regex flags.
regexInsertMatchMarkers - Finds the match or matches and surrounds them with starting and ending markers, accepts all regex flags.
regexFirstMatch - Returns the first match of the regular expression within the input string, accepts all regex flags except 'g'.
regexAllMatches - Returns all matches of the regular expression within the input string, accepts all regex flags.
regexReplaceAll - Replaces all matches of the regular expression within the input string

Chris Smith over 4 years ago in reply to sergior

Hi Sergior,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, all of those log output should have been removed in the previous version. I've just submitted a new version with that last logging line removed, so once the plugin is approved you should be be in good shape.

Thanks
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sergior over 4 years ago in reply to sergior

Just a comment, this behaviour is identified in regexInsertMatchMarkers
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sergior over 4 years ago

Hi Chris,

First of all, thanks for your plugin, it is very useful.

Just one question, when we use the plugin, we notice that we have a lot of data in the Appian Log due to the plugin, I suppose that you have in the code a System.out.println.

I don't know if that behaviour is correct, but I think a good practice is to avoid writing directly in log. Maybe, in case you want to add info into the log, you can add a new param like "activeLog" true or false.

Do you think that we could have that behaviour or maybe to avoid the insertion into log?

Regards
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Shawn Bittinger over 4 years ago in reply to PhilB

The last one did the trick. Thanks!
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PhilB over 4 years ago in reply to Shawn Bittinger

Hi Shawn Bittinger,

I can't find my original documentation and I don't have a site with the old version of the regular expression plugin installed, but it looks like it's a prefix rather than a suffix (my mistake!). I think your regular expression should be:

"(?c)^[A-Z]{3}$"

If that doesn't work you could try this:

"(?-i)^[A-Z]{3}$"

Let me know how you get on!
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Shawn Bittinger over 4 years ago in reply to PhilB

HI philb - What was the java case-sensitive flag suffix you were adding to get this to work. For example, I added the following and it is still coming up as true.

regexmatch(
"^[A-Z]{3}$(?c)",
"abc"
)
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Chris Smith over 5 years ago in reply to PhilB

Hi ,

The new version's been listed. The typo in regexMatch has been fixed, and the regexFlags is optional and default to the values used behind the scenes in version 1.0, so you should be able to use those functions again without changes.
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PhilB over 5 years ago in reply to Chris Smith

Great, thanks!
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Chris Smith over 5 years ago in reply to PhilB

Hi ,

The reason I renamed the functions was simply to allow people to call the old versions of the functions. You are correct though, I'll fix the backward compatibility. As for the regexIsMatch vs regexmatch; it should have been regexmatch, the underlying function has a different name so that was a typo.
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PhilB over 5 years ago in reply to PhilB

I should also add that there isn't a legacy function called fn!regexIsMatch - it's fn!regexmatch
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