Variable within a variable

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

I've created an loop in a "do until" loop. However, i can't save my flow afther adding the "do until" loop.

Power Automate wont save because the condition that is in it. I get the following message (translated from Dutch) "The variables template function is not expected at this location ..."

I have an excel sheet that has 6 diffrent collumns that needs to be checked on an equal date. Within this flow, i have 6 variables named with a number (now 2 for testing purposes) that contains the title of the collumn. The do untill loop changed the number so i only have to create this loop once.

The code in the condition:

addDays('1900-01-01',sub(int(item()?[variables(variables('Getal'))]),2),'dd-MM-yy')

Afther a little research, i discovered that my code (up here) is not right.

What it needs to do:

• The output is a date.
• A variables with the number 1 to 6 is assigned to the title of every collumn in the excel sheet
• To change that variable, i created a "do until" loop that raises the number with 1 so the original code gets every time differend variable.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks in advance

[LinkeD365]

Hey @Anonymous 

Creating and initialising variables can only be done within the main part of a flow, usually at the top.

If you want a transient variable, you could use the Compose action within the loop or initialise outside of the loop & use within.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Can you help me with that code?

I got 6 variables with the name:

1

2

3

4

5

6

Also, i got a variable (named: Getal) with a number that start with "1".

For now i got this, what is wrong of course:

addDays('1900-01-01',sub(int(item()?['variables('variables('Getal')')']),2),'dd-MM-yy')

[LinkeD365]

I am a little confused with the code, could you screen shot the whole thing?

[v-litu-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

The parameter in variables() function should be a specified value, it couldn't append any other function or dynamic content, or it will report the error "The template function 'variables' is not expected at this location".

As a workaround, you could initialize an array variable, store information as object format, it will be easier to loop through:

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Lin Tu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Hey @v-litu-msft and @LinkeD365, Sorry for the late response, i was making screens of the proces when @v-litu-msft responded. 

It helped me a lot, but we are not there yet...

I made  the varaiable like @v-litu-msft  said, but i get a "BadRequest":

Bad request. The Array variable Studiedagen cannot be initialized or updated with the value [{2020-09-21}, {2020-10-19}, {2021-02-05}, {2021-02-08}, { 2021-06-21}, {}, {}, {}, {}, {}] of type String. The Studiedagen variable only supports Array values.

Note: you see a few "{}" because not all lines are filled in in the form.

However, the first time i made it exacly like you said, and that worked:

{

"01": Line study day 01

},

But i get {"01": 2020-09-21} in the excel sheet instead of 2020-09-21.

So i want to edit that in the array that only the date comes forward.

I've got a PrtScr for you: