How to user JavaScript String search() Method

[Radhika11]

Hello,

We are receiving service request submitted from using emails.  The RITM description field captures the entire email.

I would like to search the name "From: John,Lopez" in the RITM description field and populate in "Requested For" field.

See attached

Could someone please help?   Thank you

[-O- · Accepted solution]

You are using an after business rule to update current. That beaks rule no. 1 of Business rules: whenever the current record is to be updated, it must be done using a before business rule.

Rule no. 2 being: whenever a different record than the current one needs to be updated, it must be done using an after business rule.

The other issue is the RegExp itself; it should be:

/^From:\s*(.+)$/mi

Another issue is that you are using the name directly to set the field. You need to fetch the user's sys_id and use that to set the value of the field:

GetIDValue('sys_user', )

Something like:

// Script to extract sender name from RITM description and set as requested for
// Get RITM description
var description = '' + current.description;

// Use regular expression to extract name from "From" field
var senderName = description.match(/^From:\s*(.+)$/mi);

// Set extracted name as requested for
current.requested_for = GetIDValue('sys_user', senderName[1]);

Of course the code should check that the value returned by GetIDValue is not null and only set the requested for if it is not. This is also a very fragile solution as the slightest mistype, even an additional or missing space in the name and it will not work.

[-O-]

You're welcome 🙂

Function match of a String means look for the patter in the string and return each find. The pattern, also called Regular Expression mean look for a sub-string that matches the rules:

- a line starting with text: From:

- followed by any number of white spaces: \s*

- followed by at least one of any kind of character: .+

- followed by any number of white spaces: \s*

- followed by a less-than character: <

- turn on capturing: (

- followed by at least one character that is neither less-than nor greater than: [^<>]+

- turn off capturing: )

- followed by a greater-than character: >

- followed by the end of a line

Capturing means that function match, in addition to returning the whole matched result, shall also return separately whatever fall between capturing delimiters. In our case the e-mail is captured.

To be honest, this could be simplified to:

/^From:.+<([^<>]+)>$/mi

Because we are no longer interested in anything (e.g. name) but the e-mail at the end.

[Radhika11]

Many thanks to you again @-O- 

[-O-]

You're welcome! 🙂