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Text.ReadTextFromContainer

Reads content of container value as text.

Component Version macOS Windows Linux Server iOS SDK
Text 4.4 ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
MBS( "Text.ReadTextFromContainer"; Container { ; Encoding } )   More

Parameters

Parameter Description Example Flags
Container The container field or variable containing container value. $myData
Encoding The text encoding for result.
Default is native. This function can also handle UTF-16 as well as UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE for little/big endian byte order.
Possible encoding names: ANSI, ISO-8859-1, Latin1, Mac, Native, UTF-8, DOS, Hex, Base64 or Windows. More listed in the FAQ.		 UTF8 Optional

Result

Returns text or error.

Description

Reads content of container value as text.
You need to be sure it is text and the text encoding. Else you may get garbage.

Examples

Reads text from container:

MBS( "Text.ReadTextFromContainer"; test::test; "UTF8" )

Extract text from gzip compressed text with prefixed length:

# get some response string, gzip compressed with length before
// Set Variable [ $response ; Value: GzipDecompress::InputString ]
Set Variable [ $response ; Value: "RAAAAB+LCAAAAAAABACrZlBicGbIZ0hhSAWyrBhMGAwYDBl0gOwwhkSGHIZSqLgSEIJEg4BqSxlKkE RrGQAjtv6kRAAAAA==" ]
# convert base64 to Hex
Set Variable [ $hex ; Value: MBS( "Text.DecodeHexFromBase64"; $response ) ]
# now we can remove the first 4 bytes with length
Set Variable [ $hexNum ; Value: Left($hex; 8) ]
Set Variable [ $Rest ; Value: Middle ( $hex; 9; 100000000 ) ]
# we can decode the length value
Set Variable [ $len ; Value: MBS("Math.DecodeNumber"; "Integer"; 32; $hexNum) ]
# and read to container value from hex
Set Variable [ $Cont ; Value: MBS( "Container.DecodeFromHex"; "FILE"; $Rest; "test.gz" ) ]
# now decompress gzip
Set Variable [ $Decompressed ; Value: MBS( "Archive.GZipDecompress"; $cont; "test.txt") ]
# and read it as text. it is little endian UTF-16 here!
Set Variable [ $result ; Value: MBS( "Text.ReadTextFromContainer"; $Decompressed; "UTF-16LE") ]
# show in field
Set Field [ GzipDecompress::OutputString ; $result ]
Show Custom Dialog [ "Result" ; $result ]

Example result:
{"Code":401,"Value":"","Route":""}

Count pages in a PDF document:

Let( [
      text = MBS("Text.ReadTextFromContainer"; Test::ContainerField);
      Count = PatternCount ( text ; "/Page " )
      // works only if page markers are not compressed or encrypted.
]; Count)

See also

Blog Entries

This function is free to use.

Created 18th October 2014, last changed 25th February 2026


Text.ReadTextFile - Text.RedefineEncoding