Building a string within ForAll

[pcaracc]

I have an approval flow and I would like to display information within the approval. I have a sharepoint list full of data and I need to display each row of data in the approval flow. Ideally I would use Set() inside of ForAll() in order to build a string of the data I need and format it, but you cannot use Set() inside of ForAll()

Any ideas? Has anyone else had a similar dillema before?

[timl · Accepted solution]

Hi @pcaracc

One way to work around this problem is to Collect your data into a temporary collection inside your call to the ForAll function. You can then combine the rows with the Concat function to derive your complete string.

The post that I answered here uses this exact technique. Hopefully, you'll get the gist of the formula that you would use.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Creating-Apps/Send-email-HTML-format-problem/m-p/121482#M2649

The reason why the ForAll function doesn't support the Set function is because PowerApps can execute the iterations of a ForAll loop in parallel. There's no guarantee that PowerApps will loop over the source records in order, therefore, you might need to Collect a sort value to enable you to Concat your final string in the correct sequence.

[pcaracc]

Thank you @timl 

This solution worked very well. It would be nice to see a non concurrent ForAll implementation in the future.

[JR-BejeweledOne]

I have this exact same need, but am unable to look at your solution in the other post.    Is there any way you can share it here or is there another place it can be accessed?

@timl

[mdevaney]

@JR-BejeweledOne 

Google Cache is your best friend in this situation...

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w2q7bAhHsg4J:https://powerusers.microsoft.com/...

I just typed this text string into Google

powerusers 121482#M2649

And looked at the Cached webpage instead

[JR-BejeweledOne]

I get the exact same error I get when trying to go to it from the link.  

You do not have sufficient privileges for this resource or its parent to perform this action.

Click your browser's Back button to continue.

[timl]

That's a pain that my original post no longer exists 😞

To summarise the technique, suppose you have a collection that looks like this and you want to convert this to an HTML table.

Here's the code to generate a table of results.

Collect(outputTable,"<Table>");
ForAll(Countries,
       Collect(outputTable, "<tr><td>" & name & "</td></tr>")
);
Collect(outputTable,"</Table>")

The result of this looks like this:

In an HTML control, you can then combine all of these rows into a single string with this:

Concat(outputTable, Value)

Hope that helps.

[JR-BejeweledOne]

Thank you for this.   Can you show me what the 'ForAll' line in the code would look like if I have a collection similar to below and I wanted to concat the Holiday and date together so the end result string would look like this:

  Christmas Eve   12/24/2019

  Christmas Day  12/25/2019

[timl]

Hi @JR-BejeweledOne 

The formula would look like this:

Collect(outputTable,"<Table>");
ForAll(YourCollectionName,
       Collect(outputTable, "<tr><td>" & Name & "</td><td>" & Text(StartDate) & "</td></tr>")
);
Collect(outputTable,"</Table>")