Pass a field value to the Regex Tool in an app

Hi All,

I am building an analytic app which has a series of 3 regex tools performing different routines eg a tokenise to rows, pase this, split that etc.

I have the statements for these tools in a series of seperate customer specific external settings files (Not an app values settings file) and bring them into the flow as an input subject to the customer we're running the app for.

But the regex tool only seems to accept values directly or passed via an action tool. Try as a I might, I can't find a way to pass the values Ive imported into the flow to the tool.

I originally tried to isolate the individual fields with the regex statements into their own streams, so I could move the values to the column header and pass them as single values to drop downs via the connected tool option. But this failed because when I change the customer's settings that I wnat to pull in the values for, the drop downs dont refresh to the new imporeted values, unless I rerun the workflow and resave the app, which sort of defeats the object really.

Does anyone know a better way to solve this.

thanks in advance

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Accepted answers

Dazzerman

Hi @warrencowan,

I have attached a basic workflow with a macro that I had created to do something very similar to what you're trying to do.

Just change the regex you need in the upper Text Input tool, I have used a simple string in this case, but you should be able to use relatively complicated regex as well.

Dubya_query.yxmd

XML_Field_Extract_Block.yxmc

All comments

Dazzerman

Hi Dubya,

You can do this by creating a Batch macro, with input, output, and Regex tool in between. Then you can pass a string to the Control Parameter to update the Regex as you wish.

I hope this helps.

warrencowan

thanks @Dazzerman . I'm not sure I'm totally familair with that.

I've built batch macros a couple of times, but they were to break down processes that join multiple data sources and thus create massive amounts of in memory data, and in those I was using the control param to process the data in batches. But this sounds like new territory.

Do you think you could elaborate.

My app process is as follows if it helps to put it in context.

Question inputs: input name of customer.

Run Workflow

Step 1. Salesforce input tool....using name of customer as a filter , request to salesforce for fields from customer's settings record (inc the regex expressions).

Step 2. Dynamic input for main data...brings in customers data using connection and query that is passed in flow from the customer settings.

Step 3. Bunch of various tool steps.

Step 4. Regex tool step... toeknise field xyx to rows based on expression (this is what needs to be changed dynamically with one of the incoming values in step 1.)

Step 5. Formula step...create file path for write out, using settings passed along from step 1.

Step 6. write out to table using file path created above.

The goal here is to just specify the client name to then app, and have all externally managed settings and data processed without any further config.

Dazzerman

Hi again,

From what you have said so far, you may not need a macro at all. This REGEX will match the codes that you have specified :

\w+\d{3}

You can use that regex pattern with a Regex_match function in a filter, or use it in a Parse to tokenize the data if that suits what you want to achieve better.

Nandakishore

Hi @Dazzerman ,

That was just an example . Actually i have more than 15 patterns before the string gets matched and i do not want to use filter .

Thanks.

Dazzerman

So are you saying that you have a table of strings that you want to test against 15 or more regex patterns, and you want to identify the strings that match all 15 regex patterns?

If that is not what you're trying to achieve, then I would need to to explain in more detail what you want, ideally with a set of possible strings and patterns you're trying to match against. Understandably you won't want to share any client sensitive data, but if you create an example set that isn't sensitive or protected then that would help a lot.

Nandakishore

So are you saying that you have a table of strings that you want to test against 15 or more regex patterns, and you want to identify the strings that match all 15 regex patterns?

Correct

Dazzerman

OK, based on what you have said, the attached workflows seem to do what you want.

As is often the case, there are likely other ways it could be done, but this I was able to do fairly quickly.

Dubya_follow_up_query.yxmd

MultipleRegexMatch.yxmc

Nandakishore

Hi @Dazzerman ,

Thanks for the info . But in case i need to pass another expression during wf execution how do i do that .

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