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Select column using variable in canvas app?

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Posted on by Cooper01

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Is it possible to get a column by anything other than dot notation in a canvas app? I want to dynamically select a specific column based on some other logic. For example let's say I have a global variable called gblColName which is set to "Column 1" in the OnStart.

There is a Dataverse table with columns Column 1, Column 2, and Column 3. If I were showing the items from the table in the gallery, I could show a label with each value using ThisItem.'Column 1'

I'm trying to do something like ThisItem.gblColName or ThisItem[gblColName], which don't work. Hope this makes sense but anyone know of how I could accomplish this?

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Building Power Apps

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RandyHayes 76,297 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Cooper01

You cannot reference controls, fields/columns, etc like that in PowerApps.

You will need to apply a logic formula to determine what is displayed.

Ex.

Switch(glbColName, "Column 1", ThisItem.Column1, "Column 2", ThisItem.Column2, etc.. )

I hope this is helpful for you.

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Cooper01 664 on at

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Thanks @RandyHayes. Was hoping to avoid this because my actual logic would result in quite a lengthy Switch statement but appreciate the confirmation that this is the only way.

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RandyHayes 76,297 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@Cooper01

Yep...I have posted an idea in the idea forum on this a long time ago. You can certainly go to that Idea and vote on it too.

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HEATFreight 1,024 on at

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Is there really no way to "de-literalize" the string, so to speak?

Seems like there should be some hacky notation to escape a string literal into its equivalent column reference. You should be able to nest string variables within the Power FX decimal notation. Is there some reason they disallow that other than the complexity of implementing it as a feature?

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jaredbidlow 256 on at

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