AI Builder Model - How to take a row of text of variable lengths,lines and split on comma

[JasonApt]

Hello - 

I have a use case to screenshot data in a mobile app, upload to OneDrive and use Power Automate AI Builder Model to parse the screenshot and a Power Automate Flow to put the data in an Excel table.  I have trained the AI model and the flow is working for all but 2 fields that i am stumped with how to approach.

The data is publicly available through the app so i have posted an example screenshot that i have used.

I have two text fields at the bottom where they house the same name as the pitcher in the captured table.  I would like to look at the text field, find the pitcher name and grab the number next to the name to append in my excel table. My thought is this should be an expression in Power Automate but I wanted to ask here in case there is a better way to gather data based on model.

The section of Power Automate where to link data to the table field is highlighted.  The Pitches-Strikes text field, i would like to split on the "-" and have one number in the p field and the other in the s field.  In the Batters faced text field, I would like the number to be in the BF field.

Kind Regards,

Jason

[TrekW]

Hi, Jason, this is really cool what you are doing. I think I have an idea to approach this. If the AI can pick up those two string of text (the pitches-strikes and the batters faced) and pass them to Power Automate, then we can break that information down over a couple of actions. I actually think the hardest thing here will be handling what happens if data is bad, like someone mistypes something. I'm noticing in your first screenshot they didn't actually enter a number for Colton R's Batters Faced. But we can try to address that later.

• Initialize variable action. Variable named pitchesStrikesSanitized. Type: String. Expression value below. Instead of text input from the trigger body, you will use whatever the AI is passing you for the PitchesStrikes.

replace(triggerBody()['text'], 'Pitches-Strikes: ', '')​​

• Initialize variable action. Variable named battersFacedSanitized. Type: String. Expression value below. Same deal as the last variable.

replace(triggerBody()['text_1'], 'Batters Faced: ', '')

• Initialize variable action. Variable named pitchesStrikesArray. Type: Array. Expression value below. this separates all of the pitchers by looking for a comma and a space.

split(variables('pitchesStrikesSanitized'), ', ')​

• Initialize variable action. Variable named battersFacedArray. Type: Array. Expression value:

split(variables('battersFacedSanitized'), ', ')

Quick sanity check to make sure we're on track, and it looks good! Now we have two arrays we can loop through and get their info. 

• Next, I initialize two variables called currentPitcherPitchStrikes and currentPitcherBattersFaced. They are both Strings, you may need to do some extra work if you want Batters Faced to be an integer, but I think pitchStrikes will need to be a String to support the dash. During our For Each Pitcher loop, we will update this value before calling it to update your spreadsheet. We must also reset it to 0 at the beginning of each loop to make sure we don't enter someone else's stats if we fail to parse the data correctly. Note: these have to be initialized before our loop.
• I use an Initialize Variable action which creates an array of opponentPitchers. You shouldn't need this, but I don't have this data coming in with my example so I'm just putting it there. I'll do a For Each loop that goes through the pitchers just like you did.
• Begin the loop with two Set Variable steps, both will reset one of the "currentPitcherX" variables to 0.
• Create a loop within the pitcher loop, this loop should iterate over the pitchesStrikesArray. For each pitchStrike it looks at, we need a condition to see if the current item (ex: "Nolan H 44-24") contains the name of the current pitcher we are iterating over in the main loop (ex: "Nolan H"). IF the name is found, we will set currentPitcherPitchStrikes to whatever is in the current pitchStrikeArray item, except we will be replacing the Pitcher's Name and any Spaces with nothing. How you grab the pitcher's name will likely be different. This looks funny, but we are just feeding one whole replace function into another replace function's first argument.

replace(
	replace(items('Apply_to_each_pitchStrike'), items('For_each_Pitcher_in_game'), ''),
	' ', '')​

What it looks like so far:

It looks complicated, but it collapses down nicely. Here it is after adding a similar loop for battersFaced:

Now to test it! Note: in your first screenshot, Colton R doesn't seem to have a value listed for his battersFaced. I replicated this to make sure our solution could support this. Because we reset our variables each time, it does. Where I have my compose action to look at my outputs, you can just use your Excel action and use the currentPitcherX variables as needed.

This was a really fun exercise, thanks for sharing. I sincerely hope this help you out, and feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

[JasonApt]

Good Day!

Thank you for taking the time and effort to assist!  I'm going to work on building out your suggestions over the next few days so please excuse me if i don't have a quick response back on working/non-working efforts.  I was having fun with this idea and was excited to make progress but what you mention above may get me out of the hole i have dug for finishing it up 🙂

[JasonApt]

Update on Progress

I made it through the first half where the data is sanitized and is put into the arrays! That works just fine.

I am now in the portion with the nested foreach loops and having an error where I'm trying to use the condition that current pitchStrike contains current pitcher in game.  

I'm doing some reasearch on my own on how to possibly clear up or use another method...maybe storing the extracted information into an array is the best way to get consistent data types.

At least there has been progress and thank you for that so far.

[TrekW]

Hey, glad to hear progress is happening. The error is telling us that the "contains" function needs two strings, but we are giving it a string and an object. I'm guessing the object is a whole object for the pitcher or something. We need to get their name out of that. Maybe there is a dynamics value available to get the "name" from the pitcher. A little difficult for me to trouble shoot, but I greatly appreciate you providing screenshots of the errors, that's seriously a huge help.

If I were you, I would make a Compose step after the two variable resets and just play around with it a bit. See if you can do something like:

Current Pitch Strike Data: [dynamic value for the current item from the pitch strikes array]

Current Pitcher: [try to make the pitcher name appear here.]

If you can get the second argument, the pitcher name, to come in correctly then the "contains" function should start to work for you. If you're handing it an "object" that means it's getting a whole block of info about that pitcher, but you need to go one level deeper and just get their name. Godspeed, friend.

[TrekW]

I figured out how to explain this better.

I created an array of objects to use instead of my array of strings, this should more closely represent what you have in your array of pitchers. Again, you don't need to create this array, you already have this data coming in from what looks like an AI Builder (the little blue brain icon).

I use a bunch of compose statements just to look at the outputs of each expression as I go. If you can look at your pitchers array in a compose statement and figure out the name of the field you need, then you can use ?['field name'] to get that particular field from the object.

Flow editor on the left, results on the right.

Then your "condition" actions can use the following for the second parameter after "contains":

items('For_each_Pitcher_in_game')?['name']

And the "set variable" action that updates the currentPitcherPitchStrikes and currentPitcherBattersFaced would need a similar change:

replace(
	replace(items('Apply_to_each_pitchStrike'), items('For_each_Pitcher_in_game')?['name'], ''),
	' ', '')

[JasonApt]

Apologies as its been a long stretch of baseball at the end of the season and i haven't focused on this like i wanted to.  I'm also having some issues at the end still with the foreach which i think is just in my skillset so bear with me and i'll get a valid update out soon.  appreciate all the support.