Extract substring

You can use this step to exctract a sustring of characters in a text column.

This step is supported by the following backends:

  • Mongo 5.0
  • Mongo 4.2
  • Mongo 4.0
  • Mongo 3.6
  • Pandas

Where to find this step?

  • Widget Text
  • Search bar

Options reference

  • Extract a substring from...: the text column you need to extract a substring from
  • Substring starts at character position: the position of the first character of the sustring you want to extract.
  • Substring ends at character position: the position of the last character of the sustring you want to extract.
  • New colum name: (optional): if you want to give a custom name to the column of results to be created. By default, it will be your original column name suffixed by ‘_SUBSTR’.

The character positions are integers that can be either positive (starting at 1 for the first character of the original string) or negative (starting at -1 for the last character of the original string). The can never be equal to 0.

The character position of the last character of the substring should always refer to a character position higher than the first character of the substring. If not, you will get a backend error.

Hint: use negative character positions when you need to count characters from the end of the original string.

Example 1: positive character positions

This configuration results in:

Example 2: negative character positions

This configuration results in: