Iterators

When you need to cycle through a list of things

There is only one iterator in SEL for working with sequences of data like arrays and lists:

Loop

The Loop event takes an array as its sole argument:

=Loop([1, 4, 3])

This will loop through all 3 values — in the provided order and send them downstream. This also means that the length of the list will determine how many times any events downstream of the Loop are executed. For instance, if the Loop points to a Request and contains a list of 3 numbers, that web request will be made 3 times (caching aside).

This can be very useful when you pass the loop the output of a Parser event, which is always a list of matches. Or, yes, the output of Matches which is also always a list.

=Parser('$..email') -> =Loop() -> =Response("emails[]")

This will loop through all of the emails output from the Parser event and append them to the Response Data object's list of values stored at emails.

👍

Timeless

Unlike most Generators, Loop is timeless: it does not have a recurring interval in simulation time. Also, whereas generators like Source can and will generate values "forever", Loop will always terminate when it finishes iterating through its provided input.