MATCHES Function

Since the MATCHES function returns a Boolean value, it can be used as both a function and as a conditional.

Basic Usage

Column reference example:

matches(ProdId, 'Fun Toy')

Output: Returns true when the value in the ProdId column value contains the string literal Fun Toy.

String literal example:

matches('Hello, World', 'Hello')

Output: Returns true.

Syntax and Arguments

matches(column_string,string_pattern)

For more information on syntax standards, see Language Documentation Syntax Notes.

column_string

Name of the column or string literal to be searched.

• Missing string or column values generate missing string results.
  • String constants must be quoted ('Hello, World').
• Multiple columns can be specified as an array ( matches([Col1,Col2],'hello').

Usage Notes:

string_pattern

Column of strings, function returning a string, or string literal. Value can be a column reference, string literal, Alteryx® pattern, or regular expression to match against the source column-string.

Usage Notes:

Examples

Example - Filtering log data

In downloaded log files, you might see error messages of the following type:

• INFO - status information on the process
• WARNING - system encountered a non-fatal error during execution
• ERROR - system encountered an error, which might have caused the job to fail.

For purposes of analysis, you might want to filter out the data for INFO and WARNING messages.

Source:

Here is example data from a log file of a failed job:

Transformation:

When the above data is loaded into the application, you might want to break up the data into separate columns, which splits them on the Z character at the end of the timestamp:

Then, you can rename the two columns: Timestamp and Log_Message. To filter out the INFO and WARNING messages, you can use the following transforms, which match on the string literals to identify these messages:

Results:

After the above steps, the data should look like the following: