List Operation

Last modified: January 11, 2024

1 Introduction

The List operation activity can perform various actions on a list. The result of the action is returned as a new list in contrast to the Change list activity.

The actions which can be performed are:

  • Union
  • Intersect
  • Subtract
  • Contains
  • Equals
  • Sort
  • Filter
  • Filter by expression
  • Find
  • Find by expression
  • Head
  • Tail
  • Range

See below for details on these actions.

2 Properties

An example of list operation properties is represented in the image below:

list operation properties

There are two sets of properties for this activity, those in the dialog box on the left, and those in the properties pane on the right.

The list operation properties pane consists of the following sections:

3 Action Section

The Action section of the properties pane shows the action associated with this activity.

You can open a dialog box to configure this action by clicking the ellipsis () next to the action.

You can also open the dialog box by double-clicking the activity, or right-clicking the activity and selecting Properties.

3.1 Operation

A list operation action can execute any of the following operations. The operations are categorized by the type of operands they have:

  • Binary – operations which work with a second list or object
  • Member Inspections – operations which work with specified elements (attributes and associations) of the objects in the list
  • Unary – operations which work on the list with no other operands

3.1.1 Binary

These binary operations have as an input a list and either another list or an object. They return another list or a Boolean, depending on the operation. All lists and objects must relate to the same entity.

Operation Description Result Type
Union The result is a combination of the elements of both parameters avoiding duplicates. List
Intersect The result is a list containing elements that appear in both parameters. List
Subtract The result is the first parameter with the element (or elements) of the second parameter removed. List
Contains Checks whether all elements of the second parameter are present in the first parameter. Boolean
Equals Checks whether the lists contain the same elements. Boolean

3.1.2 Member Inspections

These operations takes a list and one or more members (attributes or associations) as input. They return either an object or another list, depending on the operation.

Operation Description Result Type
Sort Allows you to sort a list based on a number of attributes. The attributes are ordered to determine their priority while sorting. You cannot use associations to sort a list. Sorting attributes from generalized entities is not allowed. List
Find Finds the first object of which the member has the given value. Object
Filter Finds all objects of which the member has the given value. List

3.1.3 Unary

These unary operations have a list as the single operand and return either an object or another list, depending on the operation.

Operation Description Result Type
Head The result is the first element of the list, or empty if the parameter contains zero elements or was initialized as empty. Object
Tail The result is a list containing all elements of the parameter except the first, or an empty list if the parameter contains zero elements or was initialized as empty. List

3.1.4 Expression

These operations take a list and filter it based on an expression. Inside the expression, $currentObject can be used to perform the filtering.

Operation Description Result Type
Find by expression Finds the first object that matches the given expression. Object
Filter by expression Finds all the objects that match the given expression. List

3.1.5 Range

This operation takes a list and filters it based on two expressions: offset and amount.

Operation Description Result Type
Range Retrieve a given number of objects (Amount) starting at a given index (Offset). The amount and offset are expressions that should result in a number. Note that the first object has an offset of 0. An amount of 0 means that all objects are retrieved. List

3.2 List Name, Object Name, or Variable Name

This is the name of the resulting List, Object, or Boolean variable. The result can be used by all activities that follow this activity.

4 Common Section

For more information on properties in this section, see Common Properties.