Searching the specific string in array values of constants

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Karikalan Ramakrishnan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 16:10:03 GMT

True, Yes, its possible if that object contains single value. If it contains list of values/array list. will be difficult. Thanks Chris.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Chris — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 16:01:50 GMT

No problem!

Also to note, since object descriptions are searchable in /design, I will typically include the constant value in the description - e.g. "email to xyz - test1@xyz.com", then you will be able to find it by searching :)

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Karikalan Ramakrishnan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:16:56 GMT

Thanks Mike,

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:14:55 GMT

I suppose the technical answer from the Appian side would be, that constant values are not included in "search by expression" because constants don't actually contain any "expression" code (just literal values).

It's still counter-intuitive, since it seems such functionality (or something very similar) should have the ability to let us scan for problematic labels, emails, id values, etc, in a large production system - where the same values would be easyish to find if they'd been hardcoded into their respective interfaces or expression rules. As I said, this has troubled me on several occasions, and I still don't know of any easy workarounds, other than the one you mentioned already.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Karikalan Ramakrishnan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:05:35 GMT

You're right, thanks Chris.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Karikalan Ramakrishnan — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:04:45 GMT

Thanks Danny / Mike,

Yes Mike is right. I'm looking to scan the content of constants using the search string. Although search by expression is possible, however to search inside the constant values, only option seems to download the constants objects as a package and use standard windows search tool to scan xml files. I'm trying to find the specific email-id value where its referred in the application objects / application settings.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Chris — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:02:15 GMT

It sounds to me like the question is, can we search the /design environment for certain text and have it return any constant that contains this value. E.g. search design objects for "@xyz.com", and cons!EMAIL_VALUES is displayed as the result. Similar to how we can search expressions for certain text/SAIL. As far as I know, this is not possible.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Mike Schmitt — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 14:57:48 GMT

My assumption was that he's referring to the /design "search by expression" functionality, which in fact does not return results of constant values as far as I've been able to tell, much to my occasional frustration.

RE: Searching the specific string in array values of constants

Danny Verb — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 14:53:18 GMT

When an expression runs, all constants get evaluated to their set value which in this case is a List of Text. You should have no problem finding a specific string in an array of text. Can you provide an example expression which isn't working?