Forum Discussion

ArchiveUser's avatar
ArchiveUser
Qrew Captain
10 years ago

Can I extract specific text from the middle of a string?

I have a field that contains serial numbers within blocks of sentence text. I want to extract the serial numbers and place them into their own field. I cannot control the input into these fields or m...
Formulas and functions
roles and permissions
Tables and fields
BobJordan's avatar
BobJordan
Qrew Cadet
9 years ago
Hey Dan,
You simply cannot get the anywhere near the level of precision with the extremely limited set of text manipulation functions in QuickBase compared to using script and regular expressions

You mentioned that this could be done with script and regular expressions - can this be done within a quickbase formula field?

I've noticed that within a text formula field I can include "javascript($string..." and it will accept it, but any parameters of the javascript variable willl error out (ex: javascript($string.search("S5")) will result in an error at the .search part).
_anomDiebolt_'s avatar
_anomDiebolt_
Qrew Elite
9 years ago
It isn't worth the trouble trying to put JavaScript into your formulas as you will have a difficult time debugging your formulas and adding a lot of character escaping which makes the formulas unreadable. It is best to get out of the formula language as quickly as possible and pass the least amount of field values to the script. When you try to do parsing like this exclusively in the formula language you have to limit yourself to some upper bound of instances you can parse because the formula language has no looping or iterative methods and this process makes for jumbo formulas. In script you have no such limitations or nuisances.

Anyways I have a demo in preparation for a similar question which I should finish shortly. I will reread your question and reply further when I get a chance.