How to iterate a CSV String using Index

[shabalas]

Hi Team

I have a CSV String. I need to iterate through the string and use Index to address to a particular element in String. I have used Split String activity but it just runs in the For Loop to get the values.

I need to have the provision to take 'i' th element using an index which I can run in the loop.

In other words, could I have the provision of array definition in CPO and refer  any 'i' th position in the array using an index

Thanks                   

[Shaun Roberts]

I suppose you could write a function to take a string and convert it into a 2 column array where one column is the character (or string) and one column is the index. Then you can do select statements to pull the exact index.

You cannot call a string (or even array) like you would in native programming language since the for-each loop is not a true for loop, it's made for tables.

[meisenst]

This can't be done in a single step, but depending on what you have, it can probably be done in more than one step.

Is it a multi-line, multi-value string?  Most CSVs are of the form:

Value1,Value2,Value3,...

Value4,Value5,Value6,...

...

Are you trying to get to "Value5" above?

You might be able to use Regex, or the Read Table From Text followed by a Select From Table, or an XSL Transform to achieve what you want.

What does your string look like?

[shabalas]

My String  is Single line and looks like:

val1,val2,val3

[Svetlana Kryukova · Accepted solution]

Hi, Shankar!

Using the XSL Transform activity in the product with the XSLT below you should be able to convert your comma-separated string into a XML that can be read into a table with 2 columns (Idx and Value, where Idx is the numeric number of the row).

The XML produced by the XSL Transform activity could be read into a table using Read Table from XML activity.

The XSL is expecting that you will put your string into tag.

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

Svetlana

[Svetlana Kryukova]

Once you have the data in a table like this you can either iterate over all values in a while loop.

Or you can use Select from Table activity to select a row with a specific Idx value.

[meisenst · Accepted solution]

I'd go with regex for a string like that.

Prepend a comma to your string by hardcoding it so that your input looks like

,[Process.Variables.Local.CSVString]

Then use the following regex:

(?<=(.*?\,){[Process.Variables.Local.Nth]})\w*

The input of

,val1,val2,val3

to regex

(?<=(.*?\,){2})\w*

will return "val2" in "First Match" of the regex activity output properties.

[Svetlana Kryukova]

Mike's regular expression support is much lighter implementation if all you want to retrieve is an nth entry in the list.