Can I make my Alteryx RegEx parse conditional? - regex

Question

I receive messages with the fields below. I want to group and extract the user inputs. Majority of submissions contain all fields and the regex works great. Problem comes in when someone removes additional lines if let's say they only need to fill in down to Amount 1
Name:
Number:
Amount:
Old Code:
Code 1:
Amount 1:
Code 2:
Amount 2:
Code 3:
Amount 3:
Code 4:
Amount 4:
I'm using Alteryx to parse the message contents and have success with my current regex but want to be ready for unavoidable user submission inconsistency
Name:(.+)\sNumber:(.+)\sAmount:(.+)\sOld Code:(.+)\sCode 1:(.+)\sAmount 1:(.+)\sCode 2:(.*?)\sAmount 2:(.*?)\sCode 3:(.*?)\sAmount 3:(.*?)\sCode 4:(.*?)\sAmount 4:(.*?[^-]*)
Is it possible to have Alteryx return parsed results from a message even if a listed field is deleted?
Alteryx issue with new cascading regex

Answer 1

Anyway, you can always do a cascading nested optional grouping around the
lines to just match what's valid up to a point.
This expects the form lines to be in order. If it's not, a different type
of regex is needed - an out-of-order regex ( see the bottom regex ) .
Both these regex are for Perl 5.10
(?-ms)Name:(.*)(?:\s+Number:(.*)(?:\s+Amount:(.*)(?:\s+Old[ ]+Code:(.*)(?:\s+Code[ ]+1:(.*)(?:\s+Amount[ ]+1:(.*)(?:\s+Code[ ]+2:(.*)(?:\s+Amount[ ]+2:(.*)(?:\s+Code[ ]+3:(.*)(?:\s+Amount[ ]+3:(.*)(?:\s+Code[ ]+4:(.*)(?:\s+Amount[ ]+4:(.*?[^-]*))?)?)?)?)?)?)?)?)?)?)?
https://regex101.com/r/9oKXEE/1
For out-of-order matching, use this
(?m-s)\A(?:[\S\s]*?(?:(?(1)(?!))^\h*Name\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(2)(?!))^\h*Number\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(3)(?!))^\h*Amount\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(4)(?!))^\h*Old\h*Code\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(5)(?!))^\h*Code\h*1\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(6)(?!))^\h*Amount\h*1\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(7)(?!))^\h*Code\h*2\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(8)(?!))^\h*Amount\h*2\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(9)(?!))^\h*Code\h*3\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(10)(?!))^\h*Amount\h*3\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(11)(?!))^\h*Code\h*4\h*:\h*(.*)|(?(12)(?!))^\h*Amount\h*4\h*:\h*(.*?))){1,12}
https://regex101.com/r/f2rG1v/1

Answer 2

In this situation, you don't need to use Regex straight off the bat and given the inconsistent data it could take a while to perfect one regex term...
You can do it this way instead:
- RecordID first,
- Then you can use a Text 2 Columns with a new-line (\n) delimiter. Configure this to "Split to Rows".
- You can then use a Text to Columns to split on the delimter ":".
That will handle additional rows entered etc. At that stage, you can figure out how to clean up the results (filter to remove null lines, multi-row to tag records, cross-tab to create a table etc...). If you want to flag any unknown rows, you can have a Text Input with the required rows and use Find/Replace or Join to separate the data.