Regular Expressions, Please

[Bus_Mom]

Regular expressions are my favourite. They’re amazing for processing data of all kinds, especially in the context of data input by many people because it recognises patterns. They’re also so universal, which makes them great for AppSheet, which integrates data from outside sources. My Google Sheets are full of array formulas that use them. Extract and Match are my favourites, but Replace makes the occasional appearance as well.

For example, I’m trying to extract the time digits from a time stamp right now, because they’re added to unique string.
TIMESTAMP: 5/19/2018 00:00:00 (WANT 000000)
Easy with REGEX: =RIGHT(RegexReplace(To_Text(A1),"\D+",""),6)
With AppSheet: =SUBSTITUTE(TIME([TIMESTAMP])-“00:00:00”,":","")
(side note: I’ve seen a lot of threads asking for 24-hour time format selection regardless of locale. This would be great!! I’m calculating a duration here to get the correct numbers.)

I’ve been figuring out how to use substitute a lot, but it gets tricky when dealing with multiple characters and substrings (e.g. phone numbers, which everyone inputs differently). Setting validation rules and using lots of substituting works, but regex is just amazing for standardization!!

Please, add my vote for regular expressions!!

[Grant_Stead]

Have you seen this yet?

help.appsheet.com

EXTRACT()

Extract values from text.

[Bus_Mom]

Thanks, Grant. I’ll play around with that for sure. I’d seen it before, but had only seen it applied to extracting choices and prices. The link to the article is helpful.

[Former Community Member]

side note: I’ve seen a lot of threads asking for 24-hour time format selection regardless of locale. This would be great!!

We recently added date formatting expressions that would fit this use case.

[Grant_Stead]

OMG when did this happen???

[Jonathon]

How’d that one slide under the radar. Thats pretty huge.

[Grant_Stead]

It’s getting so frustrating not being able to stay abreast of feature updates… I understand NOT having a digest/email, to force the users to come and interact in the community if they want to find updates. But at least put them in the announcement section. (I also think enterprise and partners should get a legit digest of each and every change… but that’s just me…)

Jonathon:

How’d that one slide under the radar. Thats pretty huge.

[Jonathon]

The https://help.appsheet.com/en/ repository is where updates go to die

If there was a way to view recently updated articles that would be helpful.

Maybe AppSheet should adopt a wiki-style help forum and allow the community to submit suggestions for approval.

[Grant_Stead]

Amen

[jcadence]

Hi @Grant_Stead. Thank you for your note and know this is something we’re working on daily. We have a few different ways that we’re currently promoting feature releases to help keep you all informed:

• This community. Under the “New in Appsheet”, “Announcements” and “Tips & Tricks” categories you’ll find new feature announcements and information on most new releases. With daily feature deployment this is a work in progress that we’re trying to improve.
• Feature Friday. I personally post quick notes about new releases and features that have been trending in the community. This goes live every Friday at 9am PST.
• Monthly newsletter. There’s now a section of the monthly newsletter delivered at the end of each month that provides a list of a significant number of features. Everyone opted into our emails should be receiving this.
• Office Hours. Every two weeks we run a one-hour webinar that provides how-to videos on recent releases. You can register for our next session by visiting this link.
• Pop up messages in your AppSheet editor. This is a new, direct way we are testing for communicating certain feature releases.

If there any additional methods that would be helpful or ways we can approach feature announcements please feel free to reach out to me directly. I care deeply about setting you all up for success and am open to any feedback you might have.

[Jonathon]

Those are all great; however none of those are as good as a simple changelog!

[jcadence]

Hi @Jonathon thank you for the feedback. Updating support articles is something we are working on improving. For the time being, the community acts as our support wiki page but if you have a few support articles that you’ve encountered that are out of date, please feel free to send me the names or links and we’ll get them updated. We’re currently making improvements based on the number of searches for certain topics but I’m happy to fix anything else that you encounter.

[Grant_Stead]

I get it. I also know that there’s top secret stuff going on behind the curtain so you can’t just expose your legit version change log. But for the most part all of the “big” stuff we all get… It’s the small things that come out of no where that geek us up. The people invested heavily into the platform really should have a clue as to what’s coming down the pipe, or at least what’s already been changed/deprecated/added…
The pop up messages in the editor are annoying, how do I turn them off?
Also, asking for a review every time I make a move is annoying, how do I turn that off?(I’ve done many reviews)

[Chris_Jeal]

Brilliant,

what a great way to show a date/time, I’ve been looking for this for a long time I know others have been too.

Well spotted @Steve_Howard.

[Billy_Sheng]

Hi Grant,
Some great ideas all around. Some of the small changes that come out of no-where could be related to your plan. Are you currently on pro/premium or a business plan?

Billy

[Grant_Stead]

Enterprise… And a Partner…