topic RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions in Product Forum

Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

MayankGoyal2 — Sun, 24 May 2020 17:53:00 GMT

Hi, I have couple of questions regarding string and regex -

1) If I have a String and have to find position of all occurrences of a word (occurrences) in it and return all position in a collection, is there any VBO for the same?
2) If in above case the word to find is not constant, hence I want to define a Regex for it, then find all occurrences of regex in String and return a collection with matched value of String and position (collection with 2 fields) is there any VBO for this?

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

PratyushGarikap — Fri, 29 May 2020 09:59:00 GMT

You can use Utility - Strings VBO >> Extract Regex Values action for both 1 and 2. You have to pass separate Regex patterns for match and match position.

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Pratyush Garikapati
ROM Architect
Blue Prism
Asia/Kolkata
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

MayankGoyal2 — Sat, 30 May 2020 19:24:00 GMT

@Pratyush Garikapati - Thanks a lot for your response. I tried this action, however I am not able to understand how exactly it works. It is asking for a collection in input which is quite confusing. Saw some online articles as well however not so clear.
consider this example - "BP is a RPA tool, BP has process and objects" and I have to extract word "BP" along with position, not sure how will it happen with "Extract Regex Values"
Another example - "123 is a number, 456 is also a number" and I have to extract numbers with position with regex - "[1-9]+".
For now I wrote a custom code with VB and that is returning me a collection with matching values and position and working fine, however I prefer using standard built in BP VBOs to best possible. Hence kindly suggest how exactly Extract Regex Values works and how can I use it.

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Mayank Goyal
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

PratyushGarikap — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 09:28:00 GMT

In the first example, you are searching for a specific word i.e. "BP". It will probably be easier to use InStr function instead of RegEx, as InStr will provide you the match position directly.

FYI - there are 2 VBOs that provide RegEx actions, but neither of these provide position of match.
https://digitalexchange.blueprism.com/dx/entry/9648/solution/blue-prism-strings-utility
https://digitalexchange.blueprism.com/dx/entry/3593/solution/avoregex

If you want to make your logic generic enough to search for all matches and also return all the positions of match, then you are better off writing your custom VBO. BP recommends that you use existing VBOs if they already have the functionality you need, but you can always extend the VBOs as long as it is reusable.

Extract Regex Values is splitting the Target String using "-" or "to" as the delimiter. The first split goes to Lower row in Named Values collection and second split goes to Upper. This approach works as long as you know the number of matches or if you are doing a split by categories.

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Pratyush Garikapati
ROM Architect
Blue Prism
Asia/Kolkata
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

SushmaDas — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 20:50:00 GMT

Hi Mayank Goyal,

Thanks for the above information. Can you please help me how did you get all occurrences of a string with positions please ? I have to implement the same thing for my process.

Thanks,
Sushma

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Sushma Das
System Analyst
Legal and General
Asia/Kolkata
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 04:27:00 GMT

Hi Sushma,

The current action 'Extract Regex Values' of 'Utility - Strings' VBO has a limitation of extracting any repeated occurrences of a given regular expression match to it since it can only extract the first available regular expression match. Hence, I modified this VBO for one of my use cases in order to get multiple occurrences match. I tweaked the code a bit more as you also need the positions along with the regular expression matches.

You can make a copy of the existing 'Utility - Strings' VBO or make a new custom business object from the scratch. In the 'Initialise' page of your VBO, under the 'Code Options' tab of your Page Description stage be sure to check if you have the following 'Namespace Imports' and 'External References' first with your 'Language' selected as 'Visual Basic'.

External References:

System.Data.dll
System.Xml.dll
System.Drawing.dll

Namespace Imports:

System
System.Drawing
System.Data
System.IO
System.XML
System.Diagnostics
Microsoft.VisualBasic
System.Data
system.text.regularexpressions
System.Text
System.Collections.Generic
Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO

Now, create a new action called 'Extract Regex Values For Multiple Occurrences' with two input parameters named 'Regex Pattern' of type 'Text' and 'Target String' of type 'Text' along with an output parameter called 'Result' of type 'Collection' and map the data items accordingly.

Add a code stage now, called 'Extract Multiple Values' with the below arguments and code:

Code:

Dim output As DataTable
Dim regexObj As Regex
Dim currentPosition As Integer

output = New DataTable()
output.Columns.Add("Match Result",GetType(String))
output.Columns.Add("Position",GetType(Integer))

regexObj = New Regex(Regex_Pattern)

currentPosition = 0

For Each matchElement As Match In regexObj.Matches(Target_String)

currentPosition = Target_String.IndexOf(matchElement.Value, currentPosition+1)
output.Rows.Add(matchElement.Value,currentPosition)

Next

Result = output

You can now test the same logic either from process studio once you publish this action or from the action page itself. So here I have provided the inputs as follows:

And upon running the workflow, my output is as follows:

NOTE: The position value here in this collection indicates the position considering that the index starts from 0 and end at 'N-1'. Which means if the text to be searched is at first position for example, then the position would be returned as '0'

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

ewilson — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 14:58:00 GMT

@devneetmohanty07, @Sushma Das,

FYI, the most recent version of the Utility - Strings VBO, available on the DX, includes an action called Extract Regex All Matches which return all matches of a particular pattern, not just the first one. However, it does not include the position of that match. That's something we can add.

I believe this update to the VBO was added last Summer.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

devneetmohanty07 — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:18:00 GMT

Hi @ewilson,

At my last organization, when we were working on Blue Prism ver.6.4, I faced this issue with the in-house, 'Utility - Strings' business object within the internal VBO folder. Seems like the VBO got updated in DX Exchange and I wasn't aware of that. Though great to know we have the new add-on feature with us now.

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Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

ewilson — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:31:00 GMT

@devneetmohanty07,

The DX team have been releasing updates to assets at a much faster rate than what Blue Prism previously was able to do through regular product updates.

I always recommend that users find the DX card for the core assets they use and sign up for notifications when a change is made.

And for any changes you feel should be made to an existing asset, please let us know via the DX Ideas page. Those changes will be evaluated and added to our backlog where it makes sense.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

PvD_SE — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:32:00 GMT

Hi S,

As usual, you do not want to just ask a question and copy/paste the answer without doing any due diligence yourself. To learn more about Regex you might want to check out this site, and why not scan YouTube, or your favorite educational site, for courses on the subject.

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Happy coding!
Paul
Sweden
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

devneetmohanty07 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:08:00 GMT

@ewilson - Great update there to keep a note of, I use a lot of assets from DX Exchange myself and was aware of many actions, though I think I kind of skipped over this VBO completely but as you said it makes a lot of sense to check the development cards over DX regularly since it would be must easier to roll out frequent updates there. I have a list of many actions which would be great if they can be published as well since I have created a lot of code stages to get around those. I will surely post the DX ideas section with them as you suggested.

@Paul JHM Van Doorn - Though I completely agree with your statement that one should not just ask a new question without doing any due diligence over an ongoing thread like that, but in this case I would beg to differ since her question wasn't really related to any regular expression that can be googled or discovered on YouTube which seems to be like a part of the syllabus of any ongoing online course. Her question wasn't even related to some regular expression query and was rather targeted to an use case which was the same question that got asked in the first place but never really got answered.

If you observe carefully the thread, even I can't see where really the answer is given. The last answer is pretty much an open ended answer where it has been suggested to use a custom VBO and whatsoever no solution file or example was attached which can confirm how to find the positions and as Eric also mentioned the DX Exchange VBO also lacks this feature as of now.

Threads like this seem to be a good case to be continued since we ourselves tell the other members a lot of times to check similar questions a lot in the community and if there is a thread which corresponds to such a query, it should be addressed completely rather than them opening a new thread altogether or duplicating it. Just my view and opinion on open ended threads and how they should be handled. I am completely open to hear your opinions and views on the same.

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Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

ewilson — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:20:00 GMT

@devneetmohanty07 I'd love to get your input on any of the assets on the DX. Here's the link for the DX Asset Ideas page:

https://digitalexchange.blueprism.com/site/global/ideas/index.gsp

While I'm here, I'll add my $.02 on the idea of continuing old threads. Personally, I wish people would just create a new thread to ask their question and link any related/older threads. In my opinion, that makes it easier to keep track of questions, answers, and variations. 🤷‍♂️

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

PvD_SE — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 13:54:00 GMT

Hi guys,

Eric:
I support your wish to have folks start a new thread for either similar or distantly related subjects. I have pointed out my view on this before, but continuing on years old threads with slightly related questions seems to prevail. Perhaps BP could be persuaded to add an button to a thread that closes it once answered?

Devneet:
Since a while, BP took the excellent initiative to add a footer 'Related content' that can be used for easily finding related issues from the BP community forums. In any question I have, it would be a dead giveaway to start looking there.
Also, I am quite sure to have seen instructions online to do solve the original question asked in this thread in 2020. Likely that would be YouTube, but it could also be Udemy that I have access to via my work. The 101 link was added to help out inquisitive souls that want to test and see what Regex can do. That's usually the road I take; get directions, do some testing, followed by tweaking and we're in business.
For the fun of it, I quickly searched for the exact question: 'regex get all occurrences of a string with positions' and got directly to the first site (stackoverflow) providing me with an answer. Given that, I wouldn't dream of asking the question on this forum. When the thing is still unclear after I'd been playing with it for a while, I would formulate a question that solves where my research got stuck. But then again, perhaps that's just me trying to learn something new.
Don't get me wrong, I do like a lot of answers explaining how things work, but I sometimes have my doubts about the questions. And yes, if you want to learn you have to ask questions, heck, I ask questions all the time! But always aim to make it a good question.

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Happy coding!
Paul
Sweden
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

devneetmohanty07 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 14:54:00 GMT

Paul,

That idea actually is really great, I also thought of this sometime back that the threads once marked with 'Best Answer' should be either closed automatically or should instead have a button to mark the same. I agree with you Eric as well, the open ended thread thing really creates a lot of unnecessary back and forth jumps and is overall really difficult to keep track of things. Perhaps, Paul either one of us can create this idea for the same though I know till we don't have enough votes it won't be considered but worth a try as I will connect with my networks as well to have it highlighted.

I agree completely with your points as well, that's a great point of view from your end about only relying on the community once you are stuck with your research work at some point. Even I do that so I can completely understand where you are coming from.

I will share my experience on one thing though with you, before being a part of the community I used to help a lot of people on RPA groups hosted on personal messaging apps and many self published forums related to any issues they faced with code stages or C# implementation. One thing I noticed was that most of the people actually asking those questions were either business users mostly or were in RPA space but not from a technical background so that they can understand the code behind that. So whenever, I used to post these snippets of code directly to them, they would be ask me how to integrate the same with Blue Prism. Though now also even when there are LMS on how to integrate code stages still having DLL's and References are something which make this topic vast in sense. Other thing is I believe 'Stack Overflow' is the ultimate resource for any developer out there no doubts on that but sometimes I don't feel a business user would feel comfortable looking at those from a distance.

This is where I feel the Blue Prism Community shines as the answers here can be technical but are presented in a much friendlier way with markups and all. Plus in order to increase the engagement on the Blue Prism Community as well, I think it would be better if we can redirect most of the traffic from other forums related to Blue Prism directly on the Community site. That way the Blue Prism Community can grow better by miles like a one stop solution point by the community members and for the community members.

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

PvD_SE — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:24:00 GMT

Hi Devneet,

Another thing missing on this forum is the ThumbsUp button that I'd like to click on your answer.

I will concoct an ideation entry tomorrow now. Even though I speculate that it may not collect the number of votes set as a minimum motivation for development by BP, as supplier of a service the good folks at BP might be persuaded to go with it anyway.

https://community.blueprism.com/innovate/ideas/viewidea?IdeationKey=d6ee2e7e-6e45-4bbe-ade6-564bd63d962b

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Happy coding!
Paul
Sweden
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RE: Strings Manipulation and Regex solutions

devneetmohanty07 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 16:37:00 GMT

Thanks a lot Paul for your thoughts and initiating the idea. They are as insightful as always and you already have my vote up there 🙂

I will try to get it as much spotlight as possible from my connected peers and connections.

PS. I think my next idea should be to make ideas acceptable with 10 votes instead of 20 😄

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Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
Wonderbotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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