Check if user selection is in array?

[elfreddos]

I am building a travel tracker that needs to flag when someone is travelling to or stopping over in certain countries. I have a list of two sets of countries stored in two arrays in Power Automate. So for example any EU country or any North American country.

In my form on PoweApps, if the country column or the stopover column contains a country in either of the two arrayain Power Automate, I need to be notified by email.

I just can't figure out an easy way to do this. I've tried a compose and then a contains expression, but the problem is you can only compare one variable, or array, not multiple.

I've tried a condition with the OR but this always returns false, so for example:

OR

varEUcountry contains varDestination

varNAcountry contains varStopover

Always returns false even if the country is in the array.

I've also tried filter array card but you can't filter an array variable for some reason.

Does anyone have any ideas how this can be achieved?

[eliotcole]

Hi, @elfreddos ... I think it'd help to get a screenshot embedded into your question (not attached as not everyone can download files) as it will really help folks offer solutions with a bit more context behind it. 🙂

You could also potentially include some of the arrays, as a code block, perhaps ... but only if you can be bothered! 😅

All that being said, perhaps you would have some more success with your contains by ensuring that your varEUcountry and varNAcountry arrays have all their values in lower case ... then ensure that you wrap your varDestination and varStopover variables in a toLower() function. 👍

I realise that piece of advice could be way off, though, since I don't really know much about your flow.

A pertinent question, therefore would definitely be for us to know if your array a complex one (with key/value pairs?) or is it a simple one with just a set of strings?

[elfreddos]

Forget what I've done so far. Is there a way to achieve what I have set out as needing to do?

All the countries are in a drop down in PowrApps with sentence case. The ones in the array are intialised like:

[

"England",

"France,

"Spain"

]

And so on

[eliotcole]

Hi, @elfreddos ... well ...

---

@elfreddos wrote:

Forget what I've done so far. Is there a way to achieve what I have set out as needing to do?

All the countries are in a drop down in PowrApps with sentence case. The ones in the array are intialised like:

[

"England",

"France,

"Spain"

]

And so on

---

... like I said above ...

All that being said, perhaps you would have some more success with your contains by ensuring that your varEUcountry and varNAcountry arrays have all their values in lower case ... then ensure that you wrap your varDestination and varStopover variables in a toLower() function.

... you could always try some of that?

---

Also, don't worry about the fact that you "Forget what I've done so far" as luckily you can just log in to Power Automate and take a screenshot. 🙂

Tthat's what I was getting at when I said: "get a screenshot embedded into your question"

Just ensure that it is embedded (not attached) in the original question so that:

1. Any potential helpers have that much more context and information to help you with
2. Fellow strugglers have more of an idea if they are having the same issue as yourself

---

Finally, here is some really presumptive nonsense that I am guessing on based on what little I can see above.

Apologies, that is not sarcasm, just making sure that my post is suitably caveated so I'm not accountable for crazy outcomes.

Firstly, you can create two Select actions named "SelectEuCountries" and "SelectNaCountries" with the following setups to ensure that you have a lower case version of your country arrays:

Select Name	Details
SelectEuCountries	From: @{variables('varEUcountry')} Map: @{toLower(item())}
SelectNaCountries	From: @{variables('varNAcountry')} Map: @{toLower(item())}

You can copy and paste those directly into your fields, if you have relayed the names of your array variables accurately.

If you are not pasting them directly in, and are entering the data in the expression builder, remove the @{} parts.

How to get to the 'text' view is in the below spoiler:

Spoiler

Also remember to tap the 'text' option on the Map field to define it like the above. That looks like this:

When switched it will look like the following and you must delete all the text in the Map field before doing anything more there:

Once you have those lower case arrays to reference, then you can work with those on your ingressed data with boolean variables named "IsInEuListVAR" and "IsInNAListVAR" to help you out by using:

Variable Name	Variable Value
IsInEuListVAR	@{contains( body('SelectEuCountries'), toLower(variables('varDestination')) )}
IsInNAListVAR	@{contains( body('SelectNaCountries'), toLower(variables('varStopover')) )}