PhixFlow Help

forEach



Function: forEach()

Iterates over an Array or Recordset and processes a script for each entry.

Syntax

forEach($var, set, script)

ArgumentTypeDescription
$var$-VariableA $-Variable which will be set to each item in set in turn before script is processed.
setArray or RecordsetThe set of items which will be iterated over.
script$-VariableA comma separated list of Expressions which will be processed once for each entry in set.

forEach() is like every other function in that it returns a value. 

  • Its return value is the last statement executed in the last iteration.
  • All the $-variables used in the call to forEach() keep their values between iterations.
  • All the $-variables used in the call to forEach() will be available after it has returned.

Examples


In the first two examples, let

$numberList = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]

forEach($number, $numberList, 

   $currentValue = $number

),

Returns 10, as forEach() returns the value of the final expression to be evaluated in its final iteration.


forEach($number, $numberList,  

   $sumOfNumbers = $sumOfNumbers + $number

)

Returns 55, as the variable $sumOfNumbers persists in-between forEach iterations.


Detailed example: (step-by-step)

forEach( $customerType, customers.type, 

   $total = $total + 1, 

   if( $customerType == "Business", continue() ), 

   $nonBusiness = $nonBusiness + 1, 

   subString($customerType, 1, 6) 
)


All entries after the second parameter of the above forEach() comprise the script that will be processed for each entry in customers.type. Processing is as follows:

For each customer type in customers.type the following steps are taken:

  1. Assign the value of the customer type to the $-Variable $customerType.
  2. The first expression then increments the value of $total by 1 (i.e. counting the total number of types in the list).
  3. The second expression checks if the type is "Business" and if so calls continue() which causes forEach() to immediately skip to the next customer type in customers.type and starts again from the first expression (i.e. it does not reach the 3rd expression to increment the $-Variable $nonBusiness).
  4. If the type is not "Business" the third expression will be processed increment a count of the non-business types.
  5. The final expression is evaluated and the result added to the result Array of the forEach() function.

The forEach() function above therefore returns an Array of the first 6 characters of each non business customer type in the supplied list. The values of $total (a count of all customer types), $nonBusiness (a count of all non-business customer types) and $customerType (the last customer type processed) will be available to subsequent Attribute Expressions for the current Stream Item calculation.


Commonly, you might not want to return a list from forEach(), but calculate some values in the loop to use later. For example, if you had an attribute TotalCustNumber, you might create an attribute expression:

do( 
   forEach( $customerType, customers.type, 

      $total = $total + 1, 
      if( $customerType == "Business", continue() ), 
      $nonBusiness = $nonBusiness + 1 
   ), 

   $total 
)

This would calculate the total number of customers (in $total) and write this value to the attribute.

Then the next attribute might be NonBusinessCustNumber, and you could write the number of non-business customers calculated in the loop to this attribute simply using the expression:

$nonBusiness

See Also

Please let us know if we could improve this page feedback@phixflow.com