Data Conversion

The conversion functionality in the Robot facilitates data conversion and robot development. With this functionality, you can automatically convert manually entered data and, together with extract steps, convert extracted data and then store the result in variables.

Collectively, the group of the following steps is referred to as a converter group:

• Convert Value
• Extract Value
• Extract Clipboard
• Extract Tree as XML

The following converter steps can only be used inside the preceding steps:

• Extract DateTime
• Format DateTime

You can use these steps to extract, convert, and format data. To these steps, you can add an Evaluate Expression step. Also, the Store Current In step is used together with the converter steps to store the converted value in a variable.

As opposed to other steps in the Robot, if you need to undo a change to workflow state inside a converter group or see the state at a certain preceding flow point, you can simply go back inside the step by executing the required preceding flow point. Also, if you change the workflow before the current flow point, the workflow state is adjusted automatically, so you do not need to reexecute the steps.

The conversion and extraction are performed with the help of the following built-in variables:

• The $current variable contains the initial value. The value of this variable is changed during execution. The type of the value can also be changed, such as a number value can be converted to a text value.
• The $initial variable also contains the initial value, but the value remains unchanged during execution, which enables you to reuse the initial value any time, such as to convert it again.