topic Hello again. in Product Forum

Collection inside a collection

DennisLaursen — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 17:42:00 GMT

I am using a REST/JSON functionality to export data to collections. But sometimes I get a collection inside a collection, and I am in doubt how to "extract" these collections. Is there a way to extract collections from collections, eventually with the "Utility - Collection Manipulation"?

See attached ""Udklip"" for

DennisLaursen — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 17:50:00 GMT

See attached ""Udklip"" for example

Try ""Transpose Collection""?

Christer_Tellefsen — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 12:15:00 GMT

Try ""Transpose Collection""? I use this when I want to extract data when I have a collection in a collection

Thanks, I will try that.

DennisLaursen — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 14:57:00 GMT

Thanks, I will try that.

Hello again.

DennisLaursen — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 13:16:00 GMT

Hello again. I've tried the ""Utility - Collection Manipulation --> Transpose Collection"" action stage, but it doesn't work for this issue. It throws the following, internal exception: ""Internal : Could not execute code stage because exception thrown by code stage: the change from the type 'DataTable' to the type 'String' is not valid."" (some of the exception is in Danish, so I've tried to make the most accurate translation of this) Is there any alternative ways to extract a collection located within a collection? When I look into these collections within the collection, they got different types of data (text, number, another collection and flag). Could this be a problem?

try a loop - extract the

Christer_Tellefsen — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 16:30:00 GMT

try a loop - extract the data and fix it into a new collection - if you find a collection in a collection fix it? *I don't know, throwing wild thoughts

You can use a calculation

joakimeklund — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 10:49:00 GMT

You can use a calculation stage. E.g [Collection1.Collection2] with Store In: [ExtractedCollection2] then do whatever with the data inside the collection of the collection.

Hi joakimeklund

DennisLaursen — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 16:18:00 GMT

Hi joakimeklund Thanks for the answer. I have tried a solution with a loop, calc-stage and ""Append Rows to Collection"". And this work to extract the collections within a collection.

Hi Dennis, I am having same…

SagarMehta — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 02:36:00 GMT

Hi Dennis, I am having same issue. can you please elaborate how did you fix this issue?

The looping is creating…

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:31:00 GMT

The looping is creating issue when the looped row contains another sub collection inside it in a column. Is there any other way to achieve this please ?

RE: Collection inside a collection

RAJENJAFUJIYAMA — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 19:40:00 GMT

We can actually refer to the items like so: [collectionName.items.FieldName]. We can have a collection to contain multiple layers of collections, but the way to refer to any layer would be the same.

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RAJENJA FUJIYAMA
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RE: The looping is creating…

devneetmohanty07 — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 05:58:00 GMT

Hi,

You can store the sub-collection data into another Collection stage by using 'Append Rows To Collection' action, In order to access the sub collection, you can use the following expression: [Parent Collection.Sub-Collection]

Also, please note that if you try to directly access any sub collection field from the looping pointer being set at the parent collection stage like, [Parent Collection.Sub Collection.Field1], then in that case by default the value of the first row of Sub collection for Field1 column will be fetched. If you want to access any other row data for that sub collection then you either need to again iterate through that sub collection or you can use the action 'Get Collection Field' which will accept a row index and the field name. You can pass any index from 0 to N-1 if N rows are available and it should be able to give you the values.

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Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Automation Consultant
Blueprism 6x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com
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RE: Hi joakimeklund

SHaikh — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 07:50:00 GMT

Hi Dennis, I am facing a similar situation , if you could please elaborate more on how it worked for you ? The steps that you followed please .

Thanks in Advance !

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SHaikh
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RE: Hi joakimeklund

ManishRaw — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:48:00 GMT

Hi Shaikh,

You can try to follow the below steps:

Suppose you have the collections as below:

The Collection which has another collection in it say OuterColl and the collection inside is known as InnerColl:

Defination:

Current Values:

Create an empty collection say UnallocatedColl

and then use the below Calculation Stage:

Once you run this the InnerColl details will be copied to UnallocatedColl:

Now you can work as needed.

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Manish Rawat
Project Manager
Mercer
New Delhi
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RE: Hi joakimeklund

SHaikh — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 14:07:00 GMT

Thank you for your solution Manish!

But the problem that I am facing is , the inner collection has a single row and every field in the inner collection is a collection. These fields change everytime and are large in number .

I used the Action: Get Collection Fields to get the inner collection fields in a different collection .

But I am not getting how to loop on the field names collection and inner collection , to get every collection in the inner collection separately in a temp collection .

Thanks,

Nusrat

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SHaikh
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RE: Hi joakimeklund

ManishRaw — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:14:00 GMT

Hi Shaikh,

You can achieve that by creating a custom action in the collection manipulation utility with below parameters:

Input:

Collection

Columnname

RowNumber:

Output:

found

ValueText

ValueCollection

Error

Code Stage snippet below:

valueColl = New DataTable()
valueText = ""
errorMessage = ""
found = False

Try

If coll.Columns.Count = 0 Then

'No columns present in Collection
errorMessage = "The collection does not contain any columns."

ElseIf String.IsNullOrEmpty(colname) Then

'Empty column is provided
errorMessage = "Provided column name is empty."

ElseIf Not coll.Columns.Contains(colname) Then

'Column not present in the provided collection
errorMessage = "The collection does not contain a field with the name "&colname

ElseIf coll.Rows.Count < rownumber Or rownumber<=0 Then

'Provided row is not presnet in the collection
errorMessage = "The collection does not contain row number "&rownumber

Else

' Initialise output params

Dim DataType As String = GetBluePrismDataType(coll.Columns(colname).DataType)

If DataType.ToLower().Trim() = "collection" Then
valueColl = CType(coll.Rows(rownumber-1).Item(colname), DataTable)
found = True
Else
valueText = coll.Rows(rownumber-1).Item(colname).ToString()
found = True
End If

End If

Catch ex As Exception
' Catch any exceptions thrown and set found to false
found = False
errorMessage = ex.Message
End Try

The below code will give output in ValueColl if the provided columname is Collection and if the same is other than this it will provide you the text value

CAUTION: If the field is of type password then you will get the text value of the password itself

Hope that was helpful.

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Manish Rawat
Project Manager
Mercer
New Delhi
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