InfoPath Dev

Hi everyone!

 Been following the site for a while and decided to join in, i'm a SP newbie but I can pick up things quickly. I might need some info/guidance if this is even possible at all.

 I have a form, within a form is a MSLB which is linked to another List outside the current library. I have implemented the double eval formula and set it into a textbox as a string, question is, is there anyway I can get the selected items from the MLSB into a format like this?

 Current Item selected is

Item1; Item2; Item3

 Desired format:

<1>Item1</1><2>Item2</2><3>Item</3>

 Desired format is to keep the formatting of the dataw within the form uniform as there's a bunch of fields that are repeated and I'm using the <number> Item </number> into 1 big string format.

Any ideas or inputs about this? Thank you all

 Hi - I'm rather confused about why you'd want to do this - but no matter, sample attached. Save the file locally, right click the saved file and select Design to open in design mode and preview. I did set "field1" to not be included by default under the Data > Default Values option. But the initial group selection could also be filtered out in the eval formula to exclude blanks.

Hi Hilary,

 Thank you so much for the quick response, I couldn't believe that that was even possible. I saw the formula you have from the sample and somehow I can't get it to work with mine. Is the location of the Group/MSLB a factor? Attached is a screenshot with the fields as well.

https://goo.gl/photos/zMkZRAS74XGBJwR5A

Thanks

Nino

 Is the formula you are trying returning an error?

I'd think you need count(preceding-sibling::my:mlstSubCategory .... etc for the count portion. And I'd add a filter on mlstSubCategory where you selected it (inside the second eval formula using the field picker) to include cannot be blank... 

Hi Hilary,

 No it doesn't return an error. It's just the count is not incrementing (always returns <1> </1>), same issue I have for another Repeating Table. I have another field that tracks the repeating number and it's set as

 Count(preceding-sibling::*/<Count Variable>)+1

It worked on 2 other variables in the same form, for some reason it doesn't work for the 3rd count.

 Much appreciated with the insights and help! Thanks

Nino

 You can attach your form to a reply under the options tab if you'd like me to take a look. :)

Here you go, advanced apologies for the newbie work here :D

 Did you try changing the count piece of the formula to my suggestion?

 count(preceding-sibling::my:mlstSubCategory) 

I changed your  formula to:

xdMath:Eval(xdMath:Eval(my:TDEInfo/my:SubCategories/my:mlstSubCategory[. != ""], 'concat("<", count(preceding-sibling::my:mlstSubCategory) + 1, ">", ., "</", count(preceding-sibling::*/mlstSubCategory[. != ""]) + 1, ">")'), "..")

And put on another control bound to the repeating mlstSubCategory field (to work around not having access to your data sources) and it worked the same as in my test form. 

I did, I played around the formula because it was giving me errors :(

 Try this one. Download the file. Right click the downloaded file and select Design to open in design mode.

Hi Hilary,

That worked! Thanks a lot! I kind of have a basic understanding how the reference works now, thanks to you! :) Thank you so much Hilary!

Hi Hilary,

 Ran into a weird scenario:

 I have a repeating table, I keep track of the number of items through an integer where it has the formula: count(preceding-sibling::*) + 1, this formula works for keeping track of the number of items. BUT it starts on 4. Any ideas why it's starting at 4? On other instance counter I have, count(preceding-sibling::*/<counter variable>) + 1 works.

** To remedy the above, i just added a -3 to my counters when being used to add tags to the repeating items, i know it's not a good remedy but just want to get an idea what's causing the 4 default number.

I think that you may be counting the number of preceding sibling nodes inside the repeating group? I'm not sure.

Is the field with the default formula inside the repeating group? You may want to use something like count(../preceding-sibling::my:RepeatingGroup) with "my:RepeatingGroup" replaced with your actual repeating group XPath. 

Worked like a charm! This gave me more understanding with the referencing part, I kind of had an idea that the grouping and variable location is a factor just not sure how to use the correct syntax for it. Thank you so much AGAIN Hilary :D

Hi Hilary, I am wondering if you can help me. I've seen you giving great answers to a number of people on here. I'm using InfoPath 2010 and posting to a SharePoint list. I've tried following this thread, but am not able to get the formulas to work. Also, I don't need the HTML formatting that Nino needed. What I want is the selected Field Offices from a multiple-selection list box, to be concatenated together with index numbers between them, so that I can easily pull them out into separate fields, so that I can do something with them in a SharePoint Designer workflow later on. Basically I want something like this: Colorado Field Office1Kansas Field Office2Nebraska Field Office3 I am able to successfully run a double eval on my Field Office values and put commas between the values using: eval(eval(Value, 'concat(., ", ")'), "..") I am also able to successfully count the number of field offices selected using: count(Value[. != ""]) But when I try to put these together in the way that seems to make sense: eval(eval(Value, 'concat(., count(Value[. != ""]))'), "..") I get a message that I have errors in my formula. I've tried this many ways, and can't get it to work. eval(eval(Value, 'concat(., "count(Value[. != ""])")'), "..") eval(eval(Value, 'concat(Value, count(Value[. != ""]))'), "..") and everything else I can think of. Any thoughts? Many thanks for any help. Lara