How do I escape the value of an email subject when using a web hook?

Questions & Answers
1

I have a Make scenario that allows me to send an email to a Make custom mailhook which then sends the contents of my email to an Obsidian.md webhook.

My make scenario saves the email sent to a specified folder and names my note with the name of the email’s subject line like so: emailed/{{1.subject}}.md

This works most of the time but if the subject contains a hyphen or an emoji, this will cause my scenario fail and will require me to delete the failed attempt and turn my scenario back on.

How do I escape the value of the {{1.subject}} that is sent to my webhook?

2

Hi. You can try using the “replace” function for common cases and remove special characters, emojis, hyphens, etc., or create a regular expression for it. Do you have an example of a subject line with these special characters and what you want the final result to be?

Thanks, Helio!
Wemakefuture
If you have questions reach out :wink:

1 Like
3

Any subject line with a “-“ will cause my scenario to crash and require manual deletion of the failed scenario. It looks like emoji will do it too but - are way more common.

Would you mind linking to documentation of the replace functionality? I’m very new to Make.

4

replace can be found on this page about half way down. You’ll have to replace each instance that is causing you issues:

https://www.make.com/en/help/functions/string-functions

replace({{1.subject}};-;EMPTYSTRING)

Empty string is actually a variable you have to use (or you could use “_” since that shouldn’t mess with your filename):

image

If you have multiple things you want to replace, you will need to nest the replace function (I’d probably start with “:”, “.”, “(” and “)” if you know those are giving you a headache).

replace(replace({{1.subject}};-;EMPTYSTRING);:;EMPTYSTRING)

Hope that helps…

5

Thank you so much. I would’ve never figured this out on my own.