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Nested loop only runs on first iteration

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Posted on by rgreenstreet

EDIT: I believe I have found the problem: I am not resetting "Class Time" back to the beginning of the day at the end of the inner "While" loop. Fixed that and everything is running correctly, going on to the next day like it should. Thanks @NathanAlvares24 for having me actually inspect the variables rather than assuming everything was kosher.

I have the below While loop within a For loop. The flow runs through the If/Else statements, then runs the inner While loop the first time until the condition is met, then runs the if/else again for the remaining six times of the For loop, without dropping back into the nested While loop. What have I missed?

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NathanAlvares24 1,714 Moderator on at

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Hi @rgreenstreet !

Can you put a breakpoint here given in red in the pic:

And take a screenshot of the output of the flow variables. Mostly want the variables, ClassTime and LastClassTime.

I can see here at least the LastClassTime will have some data as seen below:

But where is your variable, ClassTime? Is it initialized before entering this Main loop (DayOfWeekNumber) or is it initialized after the while condition?

Also take a screenshot of the same flow variables after it has finished one while loop. I think your variable, ClassTime is not getting changed within the while loop.

Please do provide more info of the same. We will surely guide you.

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NathanAlvares24 1,714 Moderator on at

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@rgreenstreet

And also I can see that you are checking the time in that while condition. But those variables are storing some hardcoded values which by default will store as text. You can use the "convert text to datetime" action and then let those variables go into the while loop. Also make the ClassTime variable gets updated within the while loop otherwise you will end up in an infinite loop. See below:

Note:

hh:mm tt - this is for 12 hour format

HH:mm tt - this is for 24 hour format

Make sure your LastClassTime and ClassTime follow the necessary format as I can see in the LastClassTime variable as seen below:

It shows "8:00 PM" which does not match the standard format I gave you. Try adjusting it to "08:00 PM". And it will work.

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rgreenstreet 6 on at

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@NathanAlvares24 Thank you for your help! Attached is a screenshot of the whole flow together. Ignore the breakpoint on line 7, I accidentally put it there before taking the screenshot.

Regarding the time format for "ClassTime", It has to end up as text, because it's going to be input into a text field using emulated typing, rather than an actual datetime field. It gets converted to datetime where necessary for math, but regardless, that particular variable value doesn't seem to be the issue, because like I said originally, the "While" loop runs enough times to create classes for each hour of that day, and it changes the class time each time, it just doesn't start back over for the next day.

Here are the variables before entering the loop for the first time:
I haven't been able to actually make it through the "While" loop again this time around because the "click link on web page" action keeps breaking and not being able to find the element by its ID, but that's a different issue. Because of that, I don't have the values of the variables after the first time through scheduling for a day.

Thanks again for your help

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rgreenstreet 6 on at

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I was able to get it through the first day's loop, here are the variables going back into the outer loop:
After this it goes through the "If" statements and completely skips the "while" loop and starts the outer loop back over again

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