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This page is for anyone writing text strings in expressions, macros or scripts

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. It also includes information about how to escape special characters.

Using Text Expressions

In PhixFlow, a text expression is made up from a string of characters inside double quotes.  Text expressions can also include variable elements so that data from tables or other PhixFlow items can be inserted into the string. The expression must evaluate to a fixed string.

Required output
Example Text Expression
Completed"Completed"
abc"def

To embed a quote mark:

  • Either use  a combination of single and double quotes   'abc"def'
  • Or prefix the quote with a backslash  "abc\"def"


Note

This is different to regular expressions, in which a double-backslash is used to escape characters.


The account number ACC46242 failed

Generate a message including the current account number being processed, which is provided by _out.accountNumber:

"The account number " + _out.accountNumber + " failed"

This message

is finished.

"This message\n" +

"is finished."

Escaping Special Characters

When writing expressions you may need to enter a character that has special meaning. For example, a string could include a double-quote, but in the expression PhixFlow will read this as the end of the string. To tell PhixFlow to ignore a special character, you can use the backslash character.  

You must use a backslash to escape any of the special characters listed in the table below.

CharacterTypeEscape string

backspace

Represented As "\b"
Escaped "\\\\b"
form feedRepresented As "\f"
Escaped"\\\\f"
tabRepresented As"\t"
Escaped "\\\\t"
carraige returnRepresented As"\r"
Escaped "\\\\r"
newlineRepresented As"\n"
Escaped "\\\\n"
backslashRepresented As

"\\\\"

Escaped "\\\\\\\\"
double quoteRepresented As'"'
Escaped '\\\\"'

Macro: Escaping Invalid Characters

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Example

The following macro escapes

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special characters. 

By way of understanding: \b is standard notation for the backspace character. However, \ is also a special character in JSON, so we need to escape this with \\\\ to tell it that the \ should not be treated as a special character in this instance. 


Code Block
titleMacro
do(
    $value = $args[1],
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\b","\\\\b"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\f","\\\\f"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\t","\\\\t"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\r","\\\\r"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\n","\\\\n"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , "\\\\","\\\\\\\\"),
    $value = replaceAll( $value , '"','\\\\"')
)

Un-escape Macro. This is useful when importing JSON into PhixFlow from an external source. Once JSON has been converted to XML (jsonToXML), and XML converted to Items (xmlToItems) it converts any escaped sequence (eg \\\\t) back into a usable character. The double \\ ahead of the \t in the output is necessary to escape \t when the jep expression is passed and will be converted to simply \t (the tab character). 

Code Block
do(
    $value= $args[1],
   
    $value = replaceAll($value, "\\\\t","\\\t"),
    $value = replaceAll($value, "\\\\b","\\\b"),
    $value = replaceAll($value, "\\\\r","\\\r"),
    $value = replaceAll($value, "\\\\n","\\\n"),
    $value = replaceAll($value, "\\\\f","\\\f"),
    $value
)

Tip

Check the format of the JSON you are importing to see what adjustments are required. Sometimes characters such as \\\\\\\\" may be helpfully un-escaped prior to import, making it unnecessary to unescape every special character. 

Validating Data Imported Into PhixFlow


JSON data (like any imported data format) can include characters that cannot be written to a database that is using the UTF-8 character set. For example, 4-bit Emojis are not supported by UTF-8.

The following regular expression lists the characters expected in a JSON file and removes invalid characters from it.

Code Block
replaceAll(JSON Code,"[^\\p{Space}0-9A-Za-z!:\\\"%&\\[*()\\],-/_\\\\{}\\.]","")

The backslash character escapes special characters such as [] , . and \ 

Tip

Check which database PhixFlow is running on to see how it handles 4-bit characters. An oracle database with the recommended configuration can store the full range of Uni-code characters whilst MySQL/MariaDB UFT-8mb3 databases cannot and invalid characters will need to be removed before writing to the database. See Database for recommended database configurations. 

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