Replacing Characters

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by Otto

Hi Fellow Flow-ers,

I'm not familar with the replace expression so need some help please.

We have an issue where our website does not allow ; as a valid seperator for multiple email addresses.

We have found that if we transfer into ASCII it will go through but form cannot be saved by client without changing the ; to a ,

How can I change the ; (example below shows %3B) to , (example would be %2C)

test%40xyz.com%3Btest%40gmail.com.au to test%40xyz.com%2Ctest%40gmail.com.au

Categories:

Building flows

I have the same question (0)

All responses (9)

Answers (1)

RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi @Otto , one thing which you can try which worked in my test was to add a Compose action, add the addresses into it separated by a comma, and then use the Output from that in the To field of the Send an Email.
Rob
Los Gallardos

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Otto 27 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks but does not help me unfortunately. I need to replace the characters for my full flow to work

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

The solution I gave does replace the semi-colons with a comma and my full flow worked fine. You'll need to give more detail about why it wouldn't work for you as sorry but I don't understand.
Rob
Los Gallardos

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Otto 27 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Rob,

Basically what I need to do is change semi colon to comma so when i fill a webform with the data it shows as email,email as email;email is not supported.

I believe i need to use the expression replace but im not 100%.

If your solution did this i did not realise.

My flow does the following,

Parses data from email by html to text then encodes it and sends the data via sms,email,xml for various systems.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Otto 27 on at

Like (1)

Report

Hi @RobElliott thanks for your assistance on this.
I actually had some spare time and when through the forum and found that replace() may do the trick.

I ended up using compose and expression
replace(outputs('Email_Encoded'),'%3B','%2C')

So the ASCII semi colon (%3B) is converted to comma (%2C)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
RobElliott 10,323 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Otto, that's good. I'm pleased you resolved it.
Rob
Los Gallardos

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
martinav 3,340 on at

Like (0)

Report

Anybody have a chart for other special characters? I dont know what the heck these are called to even search for it. Its not hex, nor ascii.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No

martinav

3,340 on at

Like (1)

Report

Apparently, its kinda hexy. I dont know. I tried to convert, and I didnt get the same thing... anywho:

URL Encoding of Special Characters

Some characters are utilized by URLs for special use in defining their syntax. When these characters are not used in their special role inside a URL, they must be encoded.

Character	Code Points (Hexadecimal)	Code Points (Decimal)
Dollar ("$")	24	36
Ampersand ("&")	26	38
Plus ("+")	2B	43
Comma (",")	2C	44
Forward slash/Virgule ("/")	2F	47
Colon (":")	3A	58
Semi-colon (";")	3B	59
Equals ("=")	3D	61
Question mark ("?")	3F	63
'At' symbol ("@")	40	64

Some characters present the possibility of being misunderstood within URLs for various reasons. These characters should also always be encoded.

Character	Code Points (Hexadecimal)	Code Points (Decimal)	Details
Space	20	32	Significant sequences of spaces may be lost in some uses (especially multiple spaces)
Quotation Marks	22	34	These characters are often used to delimit URLs in plain text.
'Less Than' symbol ("<")	3C	60
'Greater Than' symbol (">")	3E	62
'Pound' Character ("#")	23	35	This is used in URLs to indicate where a fragment identifier (bookmarks/anchors in HTML) begins.
Percent Character ("%")	25	37	This is used in URLs to encode/escape other characters. It should also be encoded.
Miscellaneous Characters			Some systems can possibly modify these characters.
Left Curly Brace ("{")	7B	123
Right Curly Brace ("}")	7D	125
Vertical Bar/Pipe ("\|")	7C	124
Backslash ("\")	5C	92
Caret ("^")	5E	94
Tilde ("~")	7E	126
Left Square Bracket ("[")	5B	91
Right Square Bracket ("]")	5D	93
Grave Accent ("`")	60	96

Was this reply helpful? Yes No

SouthPaw1 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi All, I'm using the following :

replace(outputs('Compose_2'),'%0A','<br>')

to separate multi line text into single text, it works. However, can I also use this one expression, amended, to replace %40 with an @ and also %20 with a space? If so what would that look like, tried multiple variations and nothing is valid. How is such a simple thing so difficult?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No