topic Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol in Python Questions

Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

deleted-user-MS0lE1F_0-sy — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 21:32:07 GMT

So I have a massive amount of data I need to get into a text element, so I wrote a python script for this.

textValue += "<BOL>" + row[0] + ": </BOL>" +  row[1]  + " - " + row[2] + '\r\n'

It works great.

001: John Doe - 12345

002: Jane Smith - 67890

The problem happens when a "&" symbol is introduced.

<BOL>001:</BOL> John Doe - 12345

<BOL>002:</BOL> Jeff & Jane Smith - 67890

I get that this is a formatting rule issue, but is there away I can get around this. I guess I could write a script to replace all “&” with “and” but I prefer not to. I appreciate any suggestions.

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

TedKowal — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:16:06 GMT

Have you tried using ascii symbol value ... chr(38)?

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

deleted-user-MS0lE1F_0-sy — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:21:41 GMT

Sorry for the confusion, it is not because I want the symbol, it is just that the symbol is already there in a lot of the attributes that I am trying to write to a text element.

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

AnthonyAtkins1 — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:37:17 GMT

So what happens when you encounter the "&"? Is it a run-time error or a formatting error? Since the character is already in the data the only thing I can think of is replacing it.

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

deleted-user-MS0lE1F_0-sy — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:45:03 GMT

It still runs fine, but the results of my list in the text element are <BOL>002:</BOL> Jeff & Jane Smith - 67890 instead of 002: Jeff & Jane Smith - 67890. If there just 1 row that has the "&" the whole list will look like <BOL>002:</BOL> Jeff & Jane Smith - 67890. It ignores the bold formatting altogether. I think you are right I might have to just replace them, was hoping someone ran into this type a thing before and had a work around. Thanks for the reply.

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

IanMurray — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:50:44 GMT

Instead of replacing with and, you can replace with it with "&", which is read by the text formatter as an ampersand. I made a duplicate field in my attribute table and replaced my "&" with "&" and it labelled properly off the copy field.

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Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

deleted-user-MS0lE1F_0-sy — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 14:58:00 GMT

Thanks for the tip! This is exactly what I will do, if I do not find a way to do it without replacing.

Re: Bold text element fails if there is a & symbol

IanMurray — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 21:32:09 GMT

further testing, you don't need to make a new field.

I replaced the value in the label expression then added it to the expression I wanted returned and it worked perfectly.

def FindLabel ([Test]):
  label = [Test].replace("&" , "&amp;")
  return "<BOL>" + label + "</BOL>"

This worked for a text field that had an ampersand on it. John & Jim displayed correctly on a point with this expression. Also I explored python string formatting and nothing worked on that front.