Select only specific elements of an array of strings from an output

[francescodono]

Hello, 

I have this simple flow in which I extract text from PDF. 

 

Until SelectAction anything works fine, so I have this output:

Now the problem is that I want only specific elements of this body. I mean, from 5 to 10 and from 20 to 25.

I tried using concatenate or union, but it seems it doesn't work. 
Thank you for any help

[rzaneti]

Hi @francescodono ,

You can combined the functions skip and take to restrict the 5 to 10 and 20 to 25 array items.

For example, I'm using this expression in an array with numbers from 1 to 50: take(skip(outputs('Compose'), 4), 6).

And this is the output:

From your end, you can replace the expression text in blue by you Select action body output. The value in red represent the quantity of items that you want to skip from the array, and as you want to extract data starting on the 5th element, you must skip the first 4 items (when trying to access the 20th element, you must skip the first 19 items). Finally, the value in green represents the quantity of elements that you want to take from the array, after skipping the N elements. Based on your description, you will want 6 elements for both scenarios.

Finally, I'm sharing an article that I recently wrote about how to work with arrays and access its elements: http://digitalmill.net/2023/07/12/using-loops-and-accessing-array-elements-in-power-automate/ 

Let me know if it works for you or if you need any additional help!

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[francescodono]

Thank you for your answer. I don't know if I have correctly understand your question.

I am using this code for my Compose filter:

take(skip(body('SelectAction'), 19), 6)

It is working fine, but I have only an array with 5 words (from the 20th to the 25th).

I would like to have an array with specific words (from 20 to 25, from 32 to 36, 47 to 49, etc).

For example you can imagine I have an array of numbers in text format, like ["one", "two", "three" ... "fifty"].

Is there a way to get a result like ["twenty","twentyone", "twentytwo", "twentythree", "twentyfour", "twentyfive", "thirtytwo", "thirtythree", "thirtyfour"] ?

In other words, I would like to merge the results of these 2 instructions:

take(skip(body('SelectAction'), 19), 6)

and

take(skip(body('SelectAction'), 31), 3)

Thank you