Incorporate Looping Functions

Exercise
Advanced Expressions

Introduction 2
How to Complete the Exercises in this Tutorial 2
How Can I Practice? 2
Appian Version 2
Naming Conventions 2
Save Often 3
Additional Resources 3
Practice 1 Set Up: Looping Functions 4
Practice 1 Help and Resources: Looping Functions 6
Scenario 1 6
Scenario 2 7
Scenario 3 8
Additional Resources 8

Notice of Rights

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Copyright 2024 by Appian Corporation. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to

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change. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, without
prior written permission of Appian Corporation. For more information on obtaining permission for
reprints or excerpts, contact Appian Training at [email protected].

Introduction
How to Complete the Exercises in this Tutorial
Follow the steps to complete practice 1.

How Can I Practice?

You should practice in Appian Community Edition. This free, community Appian resource
comes with the pre-built Acme Auto application that contains objects that you’ll use to build
your expression rules.

Keep in mind that this is a community environment not suitable for production workloads or
sensitive information.

Appian Version
Appian Community Edition is on the latest Appian version. If you are following the exercises
from a previous Appian version, go to academy.appian.com to download the latest version.

Naming Conventions
When you register for Appian Community Edition, you gain access to a workspace, which is
your personal area within the community environment. When your workspace has been
assigned, you will receive a confirmation email with a workspace ID.

Use this workspace ID when creating new applications and objects. Otherwise, you could run
into naming conflicts with objects created by other users. Pre-loaded apps in your workspace
also include the workspace ID. In the example below, the application prefix for the Acme
Auto Solution app is W0000AS. So, the workspace identifier is W0000, which would be
included in any new app’s prefix.

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Save Often
Appian does not automatically save updates, so save your objects frequently.

Additional Resources
Appian provides a number of training resources for Appian developers. The following
resources are particularly popular with our learners:

● Academy Online - Appian’s online courses provide useful survey courses, step-by-step
tutorials, and practice exercises. Explore these resources at your own pace. Survey
courses will help you develop a better grasp of the topics you need to learn. Video
and print tutorials will help you with getting hands-on experience with Appian.

● Community Discussions for New Users - Check out the New to Appian thread in
Community. Join our community of experts to ask questions and find answers from
past discussions.

● Appian Documentation - Appian’s product documentation will provide you with an

overview of key Appian features, newest release information, additional tutorials,
and helpful patterns and recipes to implement in your app.

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Practice 1 Set Up: Looping Functions
In this lesson you’ll use the expression editor to loop through an array.

1. In Appian Designer, create a new expression rule.

● Name: Enter W#AE_Looping

● Description: Enter Practice applying looping functions.

2. Copy and paste the following into the expression editor:

a!localVariables(

local!sensor:

a!map(data: {125,92,22,63,73,28,19}),

a!map(data: {35,65,92,22,63,73,28}),

a!map(data: {2,35,65,22,63,73,18,29}),

a!map(data: {9,35,65,63,35,28,19})

},

local!arrayOne: {125,35,65,92,22,63,73,28,19},

local!arrayTwo: {1,74,33,null,92,null,33,null,85},

/* Practice your looping functions below */

/* Scenario 1 */

/* Scenario 2 */

/* Scenario 3 */

3. Scenario 1 - In the space provided under the comments, write an expression that uses
the forEach() looping function to iterate through local!sensor. The expression should
calculate and return the average values for the items in each array.
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 ● When you're done with scenario 1, comment out the expression you wrote.

4. Scenario 2 - In the space provided under the comments, write an expression that uses
a looping function to to remove any null values found in local!arrayTwo.

● When you're done with scenario 2, comment out the expression you wrote.

5. Scenario 3 - In the space provided under the comments, write an expression that uses
a looping function to merge the values in local!arrayOne and local!arrayTwo and
returns the remaining values as a single array.

● Remember to save your work as you go.

Hint

Use the a!flatten() function to convert the final output to a single list.

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Practice 1 Help and Resources: Looping Functions
Review what your expressions should look like. Also, check out the listed resources to learn
more about indexing values in an array.

Scenario 1
1. Use a!forEach()
2. For items, enter: local!sensor
3. For expression, enter: average(fv!item.data)

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Scenario 2
1. Use reject()
2. For predicate, enter: fn!isnull
3. For list, enter: local!arrayTwo

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Scenario 3
1. Use merge()
2. For lists, enter: (local!arrayOne, local!arrayTwo)
3. Wrap the entire expression in a!flatten()

Additional Resources
● All Functions
○ a!forEach()
○ reject()
○ a!flatten()
○ merge()

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