toInteger() parameters

RE: toInteger() parameters

lokeshk822 — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 08:35:40 GMT

yes, I agree with you Bhushan

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 08:00:03 GMT

I was trying to perform some input validations. Some incoming data was incorrect integers but failed in other place. I solved my case with cleanwith function allowing digits only. Which is ok for my case, but not for general as general case can have plus/minus sign in the leading position.

RE: toInteger() parameters

Issam Dabaie — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 14:07:55 GMT

What were you trying to accomplish using tointeger() on a field containing letters and symbols? Perhaps an alternate solution can be determined.

As others have said, tointeger() will strip any non-integers from the input. In this case, 727 are the only integers.

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 08:13:55 GMT

JavaScript returns NaN if the string starts with not digit character, "a1", for example. Appian therefore is even more relaxed than JavaScript.

RE: toInteger() parameters

jayakumars — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 21:32:00 GMT

Yea, Appian implements a toInteger() in a very similar way to JavaScript, where all non-integer characters are stripped, and the remaining are used to create the integer. www.w3schools.com/.../jsref_parseint.asp

It's important to note here, that Appian's toInteger() does not convert strings that representation of numbers in a different base (such as hexadecimal). "0x10" will convert to 10 (010, drop the leading 0), and not 16 (which is decimal representation of hexadecimal number 10).

As you must ensure the input from your users is indeed a integer number, I agree, you cannot rely on toInteger, or an integerField. I would recommend using a textField to gather the end user input, and placing a validation to ensure they input an integer. A very quick thought would be to compare the length of the input string, with the length of the toString(toInteger( input string) ). If they are the same, you know the user entered a valid integer. See below code snippet as a quick example for this comparison.

load(
local!data: "m2",
len(
toInteger(
local!data
)
) = len(
tostring(
local!data
)
)
)

Since toInteger strips the 'm' from our data, the lengths will not be the same. Representing that local!data was not composed of only integers. This will return false if the data is a decimal and not an integer. (Wanted to expand a bit on my previous comment)

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 21:15:10 GMT

You probably missed the non-digit characters which are not in line with most languages. Also two dots make a string incorrect decimal number.

RE: toInteger() parameters

jayakumars — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 21:07:36 GMT

This is pretty in line with most languages that implement integer as well, where the decimal points are cut off / truncated. I believe Java behaves this way as well.

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 19:14:47 GMT

I solved the case by cleanwith(). But the issue still exists. toInteger() function allows incorrect input which is terrible.

RE: toInteger() parameters

Colton Beck — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 19:12:29 GMT

Can you handle this up front by validating that the input string contains a valid number, or by stripping non-numerical characters in the form field?

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 19:06:59 GMT

I need to have some calculations based on digits of input string. In my case toInteger("a") returns null where as toInteger("a1b") returns 1 which is nonsense as "a1a" is not an integer. In the documentation we have "Values passed must remain within the limits of the Integer data type." which is not true. This "must" is not validated within the implementation and I cannot not rely on this.

RE: toInteger() parameters

saboulnaga — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:25:39 GMT

I agree with coltonb , is there a particular reason you're doing this? I fail to see the point of this example.

RE: toInteger() parameters

thomasf — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:22:12 GMT

Correct, it is not a number. Decimals only have one period, so when they are passed into the toInteger() function they are rounded down, or - as you said - the digits after the point are cut.

RE: toInteger() parameters

Colton Beck — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:20:00 GMT

Is there a particular use case for tointeger() that's causing you trouble, or are you just curious about its functionality?

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:18:13 GMT

Is it rounding down? "1.9.3" is not a number.

RE: toInteger() parameters

thomasf — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:15:21 GMT

It should return 1.

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:13:00 GMT

It's not actually rounding down. What will you get from "1.9.3"?

RE: toInteger() parameters

thomasf — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:10:37 GMT

Yes, they are rounded down - or cut - 2.4 becomes 2, 3.999812 becomes 3, 45.1 becomes 45, etc.

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:07:00 GMT

Why non-numeric will be removed? Decimals will be cut, not rounded.

RE: toInteger() parameters

thomasf — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:41:28 GMT

Non-numeric characters will be removed and any decimals will be rounded down.

RE: toInteger() parameters

sergeiz — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:18:02 GMT

The strange thing is that it is not written in the documentation.

RE: toInteger() parameters

bhushanc — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 15:56:18 GMT

When converting a string to integer in Appian, tointeger() strips all the non numeric characters from the string and them returns only the numeric characters and casts it into a numeric data type.

for Example: if you have an array of String {"sdfv1254s5dfv", "15dfv125svd"}
using an tointeger() on this will return an array of integers

Expression: tointeger({"sdfv1254s5dfv", "15dfv125svd"})
Output:
Type: List of Number (Integer)
Output: {12545,15125}

and if you want to verify if a type of input then you can use typename(typeof("ab7cde?z2n7k")) this will return text

RE: toInteger() parameters

Puspendu Pal — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 14:16:04 GMT

Hello,

toInteger() works the way you havedescribed. It tries to convert the string into integer and while doing so.. it strips the non-digits.

RE: toInteger() parameters

Colton Beck — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 14:12:00 GMT

It appears to be stripping the text characters out and only returning the result for the numerical characters within quotes, 7 - 2 - 7