Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Harsha Sharma — Fri, 02 May 2025 10:43:42 GMT

Overall the issue doesn't lie with rich text field with respect to handling special characters. Your use case is peculiar because the response you are working with is using same characters within file path as well as before or after the paths. There is a lack of pattern in the data basis my understanding so far.

To work with this sort of data you definitely need to structure your data somehow. May be you can find a character set which can help split the paths with other texts. Then you can leave the paths as is and just perform operation on the other text strings.

Without a unique pattern identification system wont be able to keep some \n, \t and strip out others. It will either keep them all or remove them all. So identifying a pattern should be first step to conditionally handle these characters.

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Aamir — Fri, 02 May 2025 09:29:20 GMT

For the questions

Yes, the API is returning the file path entirely in this format.

The API is returning around 10,000+ character texts, and in those, there are multiple t and n, as well as the file paths, so I have only mentioned the file path example.

But there is no fixed word before a file path, "File Path:" will not always be there.

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Harsha Sharma — Fri, 02 May 2025 07:15:05 GMT

Few questions:

1. In the Actual/Expected output above - looks like you want to subjectively handle \n, \t etc.

The expected output shows \t and \n in the string

File Path: C:\Users\tUserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt

Another File Path: C:\Users\nUserXyz\Documentseporteport.txt

So my understanding is these are expected in the directory path but not before and after.

Do you want to remove just the highlighted ones from ri!inputText?

"File Path:\nC:\Users\tUserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt\tAnotherPath:\nC:\Users\nUserXyz\Documents\Report\report.txt"

2. You mentioned API sends the file path. Can you elaborate on any operation you are doing on the API response to achieve this inputText or API is returning the file path entirely in this format

"File Path:\nC:\Users\tUserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt\tAnotherPath:\nC:\Users\nUserXyz\Documents\Report\report.txt"

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Aamir — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:03:30 GMT

Raw output is as follows

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Stefan Helzle — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:00:50 GMT

Switch to "Raw" in the test output.

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Aamir — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:56:28 GMT

I am still getting the issue.

Actual Output: "File Path: C:\Users UserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt AnotherPath: C:\Users UserXyz\Documentseporteport.txt"
Expected Output: "File Path: C:\Users\tUserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt AnotherPath: C:\Users\nUserXyz\Documentseporteport.txt"

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Aamir — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:49:42 GMT

I have updated the string

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Stefan Helzle — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:41:48 GMT

There is a "more simple" approach to substituting multiple items in a string.

a!localVariables(
  local!text: "File Path:\nC:\Users\tUserXyz\Documents\Project\file.txt\tAnotherPath:\nC:\Users\NUserXyz\Documents\Report\report.txt",
  reduce(
    substitute(_,_,_),
    local!text,
    merge(
      {"\n", "\N", "\t", "\T", "\\", "\r", "\R"},
      {char(10), char(10), char(9), char(9), char(92), "", ""}
    )
  )
)

This uses the two arrays inside merge() to substitute the first item in the first array with the first item in the second array and so forth. I suggest to read the documentation on the functions reduce() and merge(), and also read the section around partial evaluation

docs.appian.com/.../expression-advanced-evaluation.html

RE: Handling Special Characters in Rich Text Items in Appian

Harsha Sharma — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:26:58 GMT

I attempted the scenario as is and its working for me. \n, \t all are visible appropriately in the rich text display field. May be just check if the variable you are passing in the richtextitem() is having file path as intented or not.