Text Filters in Xano - Complete Walkthrough

Welcome to Xano's guide on text filters! In this article, we'll dive deep into the various text filters available in Xano, exploring their functionalities and use cases. Whether you're a non-technical user, a citizen developer, a professional developer, or working for a startup or small business, this guide will equip you with the knowledge to transform text efficiently and streamline your development process.

Understanding Text Filters

Text filters are powerful tools that allow you to manipulate and transform text strings in various ways. From basic operations like capitalization and concatenation to advanced tasks like regular expression matching and URL parsing, Xano provides a comprehensive set of text filters to cater to your diverse needs.

Getting Started

Before we explore the individual filters, let's create a variable to work with. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the "Add Filter" section.
2. Navigate to the "Text" category.
3. Observe the vast array of text filters available.

Now, let's dive into the world of text filters!

Add Slashes

The `add slashes` filter adds a backslash to single quotes, double quotes, backslashes, and null characters. This filter is particularly useful when returning responses through your API, ensuring that special characters are properly escaped and don't interfere with the JSON structure.

Here's how to use it:

1. Apply the `add slashes` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string with special characters (e.g., `"This is my 'test' string"`).
3. Run the filter, and you'll see the special characters escaped with backslashes.

Capitalized

The `capitalized` filter converts the first letter of each word in a string to a capital letter. It's a handy tool for formatting text in a more readable manner.

Usage:

1. Apply the `capitalized` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string (e.g., `"this is my test string"`).
3. Run the filter to see the capitalized result (e.g., `"This Is My Test String"`).

Concat

The `concat` filter allows you to concatenate two values together, creating a single string. This is particularly useful when you need to combine multiple strings into one value.

To use it:

1. Apply the `concat` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the value you want to concatenate.
3. Specify a separator (if needed).
4. Run the filter to see the combined string.

Contains and Ends With

The `contains` filter returns a boolean value (true or false) based on whether the provided expression exists within the searched value. Similarly, the `ends with` filter checks if the expression is present at the end of the searched value.

These filters can be useful in scenarios where you need to validate the presence of specific substrings or patterns within a text string.

Usage:

1. Apply the `contains` or `ends with` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the expression to search for.
3. Run the filter to get the true/false result.

Escape

The `escape` filter is similar to `add slashes` but also includes escaping tabs and new lines. This filter ensures that all special characters are properly escaped, making it suitable for scenarios where you need to handle text with various special characters.

To use it:

1. Apply the `escape` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string with special characters.
3. Run the filter to see the escaped result.

Case-Insensitive Filters

Xano offers case-insensitive versions of some filters, such as `i contains`, `i ends with`, `i index`, and `i starts with`. These filters perform the same operations as their case-sensitive counterparts but ignore case when searching or matching text.

Trim Filters

Xano provides several trim filters to remove whitespace or other characters from the beginning, end, or both sides of a string. These include `l trim` (left trim), `r trim` (right trim), and `trim` (both sides).

Additionally, you can specify a specific list of characters to trim using the `mask` option.

Usage:

1. Apply the desired trim filter (`l trim`, `r trim`, or `trim`) to your variable.
2. Optionally, provide a `mask` to specify characters to trim.
3. Run the filter to see the trimmed result.

Query String Parse and URL Parse

The `query string parse` filter separates query parameters from a URL into key-value pairs. However, to use this filter effectively, you'll need to combine it with the `url parse` filter, which parses a URL into its individual components (schema, host, path, and query).

Here's how to use them together:

1. Apply the `url parse` filter to your variable.
2. Create a new variable with the value `var1.query` (where `var1` is the variable from step 1).
3. Apply the `query string parse` filter to the new variable.
4. Run the filter to see the separated key-value pairs for the query parameters.

Regular Expression Filters

Xano offers a powerful set of filters for working with regular expressions, enabling advanced text manipulation and validation. These filters include:

• `regex get all matches`: Returns all matches of a regular expression in a given text string.
• `regex get first match`: Returns the first match of a regular expression in a given text string.
• `regex matches`: Tests if the provided regular expression matches the supplied text.
• `regex quotes`: Updates the supplied text to be properly escaped for regular expressions.
• `regex replace`: Performs a regular expression search and replace operation on the given text.

To use these filters effectively, you'll need to understand regular expression syntax. Xano recommends using the RegEx 101 website (https://regex101.com/) as a helpful resource for building and testing regular expressions.

Replace

The `replace` filter is a straightforward tool that searches for a specific string within a text and replaces it with another string.

Usage:

1. Apply the `replace` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the string to search for.
3. Provide the replacement string.
4. Run the filter to see the replaced text.

Split

The `split` filter is incredibly useful for converting a string of text into an array. This can be particularly helpful when working with external APIs that return comma-separated lists as text strings instead of arrays.

To use it:

1. Apply the `split` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the separator character (e.g., a comma).
3. Run the filter to see the resulting array.

Sprintf

Similar to `replace`, the `sprintf` filter allows you to perform sequential replacement of values in a text string. However, `sprintf` enables multiple replacements within a single string, making it more efficient than chaining multiple `replace` filters.

Usage:

1. Apply the `sprintf` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the text string with placeholders (e.g., `"Here is my text %s and %s"`).
3. Provide the replacement arguments in the order they appear in the text string.
4. Run the filter to see the replaced text.

Strip HTML

The `strip html` filter removes HTML tags from a string, leaving only the plain text content. This filter is particularly useful when scraping web pages or dealing with HTML content, where you only need the text portion.

To use it:

1. Apply the `strip html` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string containing HTML tags.
3. Run the filter to see the stripped text without HTML tags.

String Length (str len)

The `str len` filter returns the number of characters in a given string. It's a simple yet handy tool for determining the length of a text string.

Usage:

1. Apply the `str len` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string.
3. Run the filter to get the character count.

Substring (substr)

The `substr` filter allows you to extract a specific section of text from a string. This can be useful when you need to work with a specific portion of a larger text string.

To use it:

1. Apply the `substr` filter to your variable.
2. Provide the starting character position.
3. Specify the number of characters to extract.
4. Run the filter to see the extracted substring.

To Lower and To Upper

The `to lower` and `to upper` filters convert the entire text string to lowercase or uppercase, respectively. These filters can be handy for normalizing text data or ensuring consistent casing.

Usage:

1. Apply the `to lower` or `to upper` filter to your variable.
2. Provide a text string.
3. Run the filter to see the converted text.

URL Filters

Xano offers a suite of filters specifically designed for working with URLs. These include:

• `url add arg`: Adds a new argument to a URL.
• `url delete arg`: Removes an argument from a URL.
• `url get arg`: Retrieves the value of a specified argument in a URL.
• `url has arg`: Checks if a given argument exists in a URL, returning a boolean value.

These filters can be invaluable when dealing with dynamic URLs, parsing query parameters, or constructing URLs with specific arguments.

Conclusion

Xano's text filters empower you to manipulate and transform text data efficiently, saving you time and effort in your development process. Whether you're a non-technical user, a citizen developer, a professional developer, or working for a startup or small business, mastering these filters will unlock new possibilities and streamline your workflows.

Remember, this guide serves as a comprehensive reference, but Xano's documentation also provides detailed information on each filter. Feel free to bookmark this article and refer back to it whenever you need a refresher or encounter a new text transformation challenge.

Happy filtering!