Advice needed on injecting values into dynamic blocks of text

Wappler General
1

I am trying to build up several paragraphs of text for a dynamically generated report based on a combination of selected radio buttons, drop-down lists etc. I will try to explain with a basic example...

So, depending on which radio button is selected then paragraph "A", "B" or "C" is displayed. That part is very easy.

Paragraph A
This _TAXI_TYPE_ was inspected at ... etc

Paragraph B
Due to this vehicle being a _TAXI_TYPE_, we have included £350.00 in our ... into a fully licenced _TAXI_TYPE_. If you wish to disregard these costs at ... etc

Paragraph C
The Experian M.I.A.F.T.R check is showing no adverse history against this _TAXI_TYPE_ and as such we can find no reason ... etc

Then for example, in a drop-down list, "value 1", "value 2" or "value 3" is selected.

Taxi Type Values
value 1 == "PSV"
value 2 == "private hire"
value 3 == "hackney carriage"

This "value" is then to be used inside paragraph "A", "B" or "C" where there is a "_TAXI_TYPE_" placeholder.

So, in this example, I end up with

Paragraph "B" with "value 3" injected
Due to this vehicle being a hackney carriage, we have included £350.00 in our ... into a fully licenced hackney carriage. If you wish to disregard these costs at ... etc

One way I have thought of, was to do a search and replace, something like this...

paragraph_B.replace('_TAXI_TYPE_', drop-down.value_3)

Is this the correct way to do this type of thing, or is there another, better way?

2

Why not use the select value directly, instead of having the placeholder?
Just add: yourselect.value instead of _TAXI_TYPE_ - the select value will appear there.

3

@Teodor, I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been. The paragraphs are uploaded by the client into the database and so the developer (me) doesn’t always get to see what has been uploaded, AND the client doesn’t know what the variable.value will be. Nor does he understand what they are.

My intention would be to instruct the client to type an understandable (to the client) variable such as _TAXI_TYPE_ into the paragraph.

Hope that makes sense.

4

In this case using replace would be perfectly fine.

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5

I'm about to do exactly the same as you! The client will have the ability to write the email templates and insert 'variables' which will become real data when the email is sent so I'd be keen to hear how the replace solution works. That's how I was planning on doing it.

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6

Jon, it works really well. I have had to do eight search and replace in a row to cover all the current options. This is how I was building up the variable with replace's.

.replace("_VALUE_", inp_costs_ceil_res_val.value).replace("_PAV_PERC_", ((inp_costs_grand_total.value / inp_val_eng_val.value) * 100).formatNumber(0, ".", "")).replace("_NUMBER_", xxx.value).replace("_TAXI_TYPE_", veh_taxi.value).replace("_CONDITION_", veh_cond.value).replace("_STATE_ISSUE_", xxx.value).replace("_CATEGORY_", xxx.value).replace("_DATE_", xxx.value)

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7

Interesting post @UKRiggers!

I will build a similar thing in a few weeks time with about 50 replaces. My app has a quite sophisticated shortcode system. When I tried to do it in Bubble it just fell apart so I’m interested to see how Wappler handles it… I’m sure it will be just fine!

I’ll do mine as a server action as it will mainly create an array of different emails to be sent out and the data to replace with is coming more from the database than from direct user input.

It’s great to share these experiences!

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