BizTalk 2010 parsing data within a string using only functoids - biztalk

Question

I am getting data in an inbound EDI file and one of the fields has measurements which I need to parse out of a single string. An example of this field is:
11.75x21.25x41.37x
I need to take all the values in front of the first X and push them to a destination field (say length), all the values between the 1st and 2nd X and push those to the destination field "width", and all the data between the 2nd and 3rd x and send that to the destination field "height".
Here's the challenge: can this be done using only functoids, no C# code? It is preferred because managing C# code should the client modify the format of the data between the X's (as they may well do) is easier to maintain if no code needs to be modified, vetted, stored and pushed to the server.
I tried using the string trimming and string exact functoids but it didn't work; there is no fixed number of digits between the X's and I cannot even be guaranteed there will always be decimals--another feature I originally wanted to key on. The only constant will be the X's.

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this using only functoids - but if you artificially stipulate that you not use C# (in a scripting functoid), then you make life much harder and don't solve the problem you think you're solving.
You'd have to use multiple String Find functoids to pick out the various pieces of the field - and this will work only assuming you know the number of xes that can occur ahead of time. Have the first input be the node, and the second input be x for string find, then connect that to a String Extract functoid. To get the second one you'll have to stack the String Find functoids, and life gets ugly. You're effectively trying to build out recursion manually using BizTalk functoids.
The bottom line is: no matter how you achieve this, if the client changes the format of the string you'll have to change the parsing logic to get it out. That logic will be vastly easier to manage by writing a custom functoid (or just an external Assembly method) which, at its core, does this:
public string StringPartAt(string s, string sep, int idx)
{
string[] splits = s.Split(sep[0]);
if (splits.Length > idx)
return splits[idx];
return "";
}
This will be much easier to maintain and understand. You could set that in a Scripting functoid and pass in your node, x, and a zero-based index to get your string out, and just use that for as many times as you need to split things up. You could even add error handling/logging ("Warning: Tried to extract value that was out of range of input" in the EventLog might be appreciated). If you're worried about the Client's facility with C#, you could also write this in VB or JavaScript. Even in custom XSLT it would be easier (use substring-before() a few times over, or build a recursive template), it'll be better than trying to hack together a bunch of stock functoids to complete this task.
Pictures of how this works (using inline C# to demo - you'd probably want this in an external assembly or a custom functoid for reusability; note that char can't actually be used, you have to use string as shown above):

Answer 2

It turns out we had to use a different script for each value (height, width and length) to extract those values from the string. Putting each in the scripting functiod using the following C# scripts worked for my map:
Length:
public decimal getLength(string weights)
{
string[] wgt;
wgt = weights.Split('x');
decimal len = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[0]);
decimal wid = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[1]);
decimal hgt = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[2]);
return len;
}
Width:
public decimal getWidth(string weights)
{
string[] wgt;
wgt = weights.Split('x');
decimal len = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[0]);
decimal wid = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[1]);
decimal hgt = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[2]);
return wid;
}
Height:
public decimal getHeight(string weights)
{
string[] wgt;
wgt = weights.Split('x');
decimal len = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[0]);
decimal wid = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[1]);
decimal hgt = Convert.ToDecimal(wgt[2]);
return hgt;
}