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mollyn6512
mollyn6512
Known Participant
Sep 26, 2022 8:18 AM UTC
Question

Remove a list of unwanted characters from a text string

Hi every one, 

I'm having a text string as example: 

{"Status":"Active","updatedBy":"lynn123","hasAccount":false}

What I expect to have is: 

Status: Active

updatedBy: lynn123

hasAccount: no 

I think for replacing comma with a line-break, char(10) might work, then I will substitute false with "no". But for the rest of characters {,},"", I'm not sure how to remove them all at once. I checked documentary for a!stripWith or a!reject and I think they don't work with a list of characters. 

Hope I can have some suggestions from you,

Thanks a lot!

    8 replies

    stefanhelzle0001
    stefanhelzle0001
    Brainy
    Sep 26, 2022 8:26 AM UTC

    This looks like a JSON string. Why not just use fromJson() to turn it into a dictionary and then use normal Appian functionality to display the values?

      mollyn6512
      mollyn6512Author
      Known Participant
      Sep 26, 2022 9:01 AM UTC

      After applying fromJson, I get this string: [Status:Active,updatedBy:,hasAccount:false]. Not sure what is it's data type as I did this in a forEach loop for every row of my grid column. 

      Could you explain more of the normal Appian functions that you mentioned? 
      What I could think of is: 

      substitute(
      stripwith(
      "[Status:Active,updatedBy:,hasAccount:false]","[",
      ),
      ",",
      char(10)
      )

      However stripWith only allow 1 character so I missed the "]", also I couldn't have the line break as expected. 

      The result of my work is: 

      "Status:Active updatedBy: hasAccount:false]"(Text), in which "]" has not yet been removed.

      stefanhelzle0001
      stefanhelzle0001
      Brainy
      Sep 26, 2022 9:33 AM UTC

      fromJson does NOT return a string, but a dictionary containing key-value pairs. Appian does display it as a string.

      You can then access the fields using dot-notation or index()/property(). Check the Appian documentation for how to do this.

        deepakg681722
        Inspiring
        Sep 26, 2022 8:37 AM UTC

        As Stefen Suggested, Use fromJson and then use index functionality to get the particular value based on the key.

        mollyn6512
        mollyn6512Author
        Known Participant
        Sep 26, 2022 9:07 AM UTC

        Thanks Deepak, the problem is that I need to apply the functions to all rows in a forEach loop, and not all of them have the same index for those characters to use index function :(

        ajk0002
        ajk0002
        Inspiring
        Sep 26, 2022 9:25 AM UTC

        Hi [mention:b18d9a2f367a407ca0cf8a9b71bef972:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05],

        below snippet might helpful for your case

        substitute(
        stripwith(
        tostring(
        {
        "Status": "Active",
        "updatedBy": "lynn123",
        "hasAccount": false
        }
        ),
        "[]"
        ),
        ",",
        char(10)
        )

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