Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Dimitris Soulovaris — Mon, 09 May 2022 18:50:16 GMT

Yes, I believe the same. It's more safe and easy to build as he will avoid many different scenarios that need to be covered during the number typing.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Peter Lewis — Mon, 09 May 2022 16:37:10 GMT

For this reason (the use case with multiple commas) it may be better to use your #3 suggestion (validation) instead of replacing the commas with periods because you're less likely to encounter weird edge cases like this.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Stephen Kane — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:51:34 GMT

Thanks Mike

A bit beyond my skill level and our deadline at present, but definitely on the agenda down the line.

Thanks for your input, and have a great weekend!

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

davel001150 — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:48:02 GMT

My immediate thought in that case would be to find 1 or 2 that are especially common for the purpose of a lingua franca for the country. It might be English, which is becoming the lingua franca of the whole world. Then there's the question of how British or American do you get with the English.

You've got a nice can of worms here.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Mike Schmitt — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:42:43 GMT

I don't suggest you try to cover ALL possible languages - but having more than one option (like by cherrypicking the one or two most common alternatives) would still possibly be better than no options. And once you've figured out how to flexibly implement a small number of alternatives, it'll likely get a lot easier to gradually implement more options, if and when the need arises.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Stephen Kane — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:40:17 GMT

I would look at that but this country has eleven official languages :-)

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Mike Schmitt — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:33:33 GMT

AFAIK the "proper" solution for this is a strong internationalization setup, providing alternative language versions of the same forms / field names / text values on existing forms, though I must admit I haven't yet had the chance to design or maintain a system with a robust multi-language setup like this so I'm not very versed in what all needs to go into it to do an initial setup.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Stephen Kane — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:24:50 GMT

Thanks Mike, I would have used the placeholder or instructions option but in many cases our target user group has English as a third, fourth or fifth language.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Mike Schmitt — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:15:15 GMT

Understood. I think this would (also) be a perfect use case for things like the Instruction and/or Placeholder text.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Dimitris Soulovaris — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:11:41 GMT

On what Marcel suggested, if you try to insert a number having 2 commas or having a comma and a dot as separators then it's not working properly. So that needs some improvements on what number formats can be accepted. Also, because the component is a textField, it can accept letters also and not only numbers. So you have to use the cleanwith() function to allow only numbers, periods, and comma characters to be inserted.

Also, an OOT, are you suggesting your answer as a correct answer to your own question? That's bizarre man LOL

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Stephen Kane — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:07:29 GMT

Thanks, Mike

Unfortunately it's not that simple in my case - I am in South Africa and there is a lot of confusion around the correct separator use - see below from limn.co.za:

"Technically speaking, the official format for numbers in South Africa is spaces for the thousands separator and a comma for the decimal mark. The American variation that we had become used to is commas for the thousands separator and a full stop for the decimal point."

confusion reigns as a result....

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Stephen Kane — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:01:24 GMT

Hi, Marcel

HALLELUJAH!

Thank you very much, that does the job.

The Appian standard I am referring to comes from the usage considerations section on this page:

https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/22.1/Floating_Point_Component.html

which refers to using a text field to apply special formatting such as currency.

Regards

Stephen

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Mike Schmitt — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:00:12 GMT

Out of curisoity, have you verified this behavior with a user account whose Locale is set to one that would use the "comma separated decimal" convention? Because I wonder whether you're trying to re-invent the wheel here.

RE: Replace the "comma" character with the "period" character

Marcel Paradies — Mon, 09 May 2022 13:47:42 GMT

Something along these lines? Does the job but probably could use some tinkering.

a!textField(
        label: "Your Decimal",
        saveInto: a!save(target: ri!decimal, value: todecimal(replace(save!value,find(",",save!value),1,"."))),
        value: ri!decimal,
      )

Out of interest, what Appian standard of using a text field instead of a decimal field are you referring to?