Value() Question

[ericonline]

Hello,

I have an app that will need to make use of Imperial values for distance measurements.

Example: 1' 3 1/8" (one foot, three and one eighth inches)

• Have a Dropdown Control for users to select 1/16" increments
  • Each value is set to text (surrounded by " ")
• Need to perform math on the values
• Interestingly, if I use 7/8 instead of "7/8", PowerApps converts to decimal
• However, I am not able to access the fraction with Value("7/8") nor Value(fractionDropdown.Selected.Value)

How can I give the user the ability to select text fractions ("7/8", etc.) but perform math on their selection?

Ideally, I'd like to take things like "1/2" - "1/4" = "1/4" (NOT .25)

Thanks!

[ericonline · Accepted solution]

Wow. Just figured this one out. Hopefully useful to others. 

Set your trigger (OnStart/OnVisible/OnSelect/Etc.):

ClearCollect(colFracConvert,
    {imperial: "0", metric:0},
    {imperial: "1/16", metric:1/16},
    {imperial: "1/8", metric:1/8},
    {imperial: "3/16", metric:3/16},
    {imperial: "1/4", metric:1/4},
    {imperial: "5/16", metric:5/16},
    {imperial: "3/8", metric:3/8},
    {imperial: "7/16", metric:7/16},
    {imperial: "1/2", metric:1/2},
    {imperial: "9/16", metric:9/16},
    {imperial: "5/8", metric:5/8},
    {imperial: "11/16", metric:11/16},
    {imperial: "3/4", metric:3/4},
    {imperial: "13/16", metric:13/16},
    {imperial: "7/8", metric:7/8},
    {imperial: "15/16", metric:15/16}
);

Set Dropdown Control Items Property to: 

• Two Dropdown Controls; Measurement 1 and Measurement 2.
• Set both to:

colFracConvert.imperial

Insert a (hidden) helper Textbox Control with Text Property set to:

LookUp(colFracConvert, 
    measurement1.Selected.Value = imperial, metric
) - 
LookUp(colFracConvert, 
    measurement2.Selected.Value = imperial, metric
)

Special sauce:

Set the "Difference" Textbox Control Text Property to:

If(
    Value(hiddenHelper.Text) < 0,
        "-" & 
        LookUp(colFracConvert,
            Value(
                Last(
                    Split(hiddenHelper.Text,"-").Result
                ).Result) = metric, imperial
            ),
        "+" & //You could leave this line out if the "+" doesn't matter to your use case
        LookUp(colFracConvert,
            Value(hiddenHelper.Text) = metric, imperial
        )
)

Whew! Been chewing on that one for a couple days. First time really using text wranglers like Last(Split()).

Enjoy!