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Best answer

Filter on a space character

  • 26 February 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 539 views
sphynxautomation
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Hi all,

I cannot believe I’ve not run into this before but I have a filter I’m using to only run / stop if a household name is joint (i.e. contains “First1 & First2 Last” or “First1 and First2 Last”). The issue I’m running into is that if a name contains the string “and” it will proceed incorrectly but there’s not an apparent way to filter for “_and_” (including the spaces around the and in the match criteria). Is there a way (without adding a formatter or code step) to filter on the space character? There’s also no way to set a wildcard using ‘*’ it appears. So far I’ve tried:

  • :space:and:space:
  •   and 
  • “ and “
  • _and_
  • and *

No luck. If I can avoid adding the extra step I’d love to but if not I will just add in a code block ahead of the filter to search for the “ and “ substring.

icon

Best answer by sphynxautomation 26 February 2021, 23:58

View original
This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

4 replies

sphynxautomation
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

(In case this is helpful to anyone else) For now I just updated the filter to say continue if Household Name contains “and a” -or- contains “and b”…. and so on all the way down the alphabet. It makes a LONG filter and was a PITA but prevents the need for an additional task to be used on an already-long Zap.

ikbelkirasan
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @sphynxautomation - I’ve tried  and  (with real spaces) and it seems to work for me.

 

Ikbel | Building custom Zapier Apps | Want to build a custom Zapier app for an API? Visit our website: https://norapps.com Or email us at info@norapps.net
sphynxautomation
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Hi @sphynxautomation - I’ve tried  and  (with real spaces) and it seems to work for me.

 

Thanks @ikbelkirasan. My issue is the opposite. I want it to stop and not let the data pass when the word contains “ and “ (with spaces) as opposed to “and” (without spaces). However, when I enter “ and “ in the filter criteria, it’s trimming the spaces and allowing it to pass.

 

For example, “Handler” should stop vs. “John and Jessica” should continue but it’s letting “Handler” continue.

ikbelkirasan
Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@sphynxautomation - Oh I see - It seems to be trimming the spaces when the filter is run. I don’t know if this is the intended behavior or if it’s actually a bug in the filter. You might want to reach out to the support team and see if it’s possible to work around it without adding an additional step.

Ikbel | Building custom Zapier Apps | Want to build a custom Zapier app for an API? Visit our website: https://norapps.com Or email us at info@norapps.net
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