Microsoft 365 Community Power Platform Connectors, 18 Aug 2022

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From YouTube: Independent Publisher Connectors - RegEx Matching Demo

Description

In this 6-minute developer-focused demo, Mitanshu Gargsteps asks: Do you need validate end-user data input? Familiar with IsMatch, Match and MatchAll functions in Power Apps? Now this same capability to test for a match or extract portions of a text string based on a pattern is available within Power Automate using this RegEx Matching connector! Returns true/false results. Multiple pre-defined expressions or developer can provide their own custom regular expression. This PnP Community demo is taken from the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Development Community call recorded on August 18, 2022.

Demo Presenter
• Mitanshu Garg (Schlumberger) | @mitanshu

Supporting materials
• Documentation – RegEx Connector | https://docs.microsoft.com/connectors/regexmatchingip/
• Connectors - Welcome to the Independent Publisher Connector Directory! | https://github.com/microsoft/PowerPlatformConnectors/tree/dev/independent-publisher-connectors/

Learn more
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/m365/samples
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/m365/videos
• Microsoft 365 Platform Community - http://aka.ms/m365/community

A

So hello, everyone, uh so I I've recently built an independent connector on regular expression, matching and I'll go through this uh demo in the next few minutes. So first a brief introduction on myself, so my name is mithanshu.

A

I work for schlumberger as a digital cell lead and I've worked across three different countries, and only last weekend I have relocated to the us. We have a like equivalent of a champions program called special agent program and I'm recognized as a special agent zero one, eight within schlumberger.

A

I am also like uh I've contributed on the on the power users forums and uh I was awarded super user 2020 to season one and uh also I have been you know, working through some of my certifications.

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Now. Why do we need this regex matching in power automate? So I had a use case, but what I saw was out of the box. This functionality is only available within powerapps and apologies. If it is there in power automatic it's just that I was not able to find one. So there was like I couldn't find any out of box solution in power automate, so I came across independent connector and that came to my rescue in that particular situation.

A

So it was a it's a simple reflex, independent publisher which lets you. You specify your pattern and it would give you whether there is a match found or not. So it extends the capabilities that you have within power automate. There can be multiple use cases where you want to validate your end user data input so, for instance, if you want legacy data in a spreadsheet that you want to port over to dataverse or to sharepoint, but you want to check whether user input is good or you're. Having you know, some input done through microsoft form.

A

Where again, you cannot have super powerful, client, side, validation, so you're doing it through power automate before entering it into into your database. This particular connector. It returns boolean, true or false. If the input string matches the regular expression, there are multiple predefined expressions in here. However, a developer can provide their own custom, regular expression, so you don't have to use any of the prebuilt. You get a generic one where you know you specify your own regular expression and go with it so uh demo time.

A

So what we'll do is uh we'll have a trigger for the demo purposes as a manual trigger, and I have got a few uh input strings like input email, so this would be a user end. User entering a email address again could be through microsoft, form, excel spreadsheet or any other input sources.

A

We will also create an action where user, uh where our developer will provide a regex pattern and we will try to match it as well.

A

So I choose my next operation under regex, and so the first one we wanted to check was whether an email is valid or not so check for valid email format. Now, this again regex by nature, it does not check whether an email id exists or not. It is just going to tell you whether it looks like an email address, whether you know formatting or the semantics of it is that of an email address so over here we would get the user input so input from the user.

A

uh Another one that we want to try as part of the demo would be the custom expression, so specified pattern. So over here, your developer can provide the pattern which we would be taking from our trigger and the text would be input request.

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So once we trigger the flow, we would provide email and the pattern and the request and we would check whether they have matched or not. And just to summarize to see what output we are getting I'll, create a compose label. So email.

A

And so check for the valid email format match found yes or no would be that uh so this would be like my summary.

A

And for custom pattern.

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True or false, so that's it's a simple flow, giving a demo of two different actions which is available within this uh within this connector.

A

So input email, I would say demo ad.

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Regex pattern, so let's say we want a to z uh up to three digits, and uh that was that's our pattern and the request that we are checking it against is say one two, three. So for the email we are expecting it to come as true and for the regex pattern. We are expecting it to say it hasn't found the match. So we are expecting it to say false over here.

A

So if I went to the summary, so it was telling me that yes, email was found, but the custom pattern was false, because one two three did not match the a to z uh up to three digits, so that is it right. It's a pretty straightforward, very simple, connector that lets you provide your own regular expression or pick up one of the inbuilt ones and validate your end user input before you use that data into any of your subsequent business operations.

A

B

Right awesome, mitchu that that is really cool, because I gotta tell you: regex is like kryptonite to some of the best developers in the world right uh being able to utilize a connector like this to make it so so simple is really really fantastic. So thank you for sharing that very, very cool uh links to the independent publisher, connector and in the github, the docs and github are in the chat. So definitely take a look at that everyone, if you're interested.