Flat File Adapter Reference

escapeCharacter

Defines the character used for escaping when a reserved character is used within a field value.

any character

/

fillCharacter

Defines a dummy character to fill non-existent values (results in NULL). Used for fixed attribute layout only.

any character

0

quoteCharacter

The quoteCharacter will be ignored by reading field value.

any character

/

recordSeparator

Separator of the different records, normally line feed and carriage return. For serialized files, any other character can be defined.

any character or one of

<newline>

<esc>

<newline>

parses correctly on Unix and Windows platforms

<space>

<tab>

<tabulator>

<unixnewline>

composes newline

<windowsnewline>

composes newline and carriage return

reservedCharacters

Defines a list of characters to be escaped automatically when the file is composed.

any character

{"/", "%", "&", "(", ")"}

attributeLayout

Defines the attribute layout (fixed or separated) of the flat file record.

• Fixed: For attribute values that are shorter than the maximum length of the field, the field is filled with a fill character. As per default, this is blank space, but you can change the fill character in tagged value fillCharacter of the <<FlatFile>> class (see Tagged Values of Class <<FlatFile>>).

• Separated: If separated is used, specify the separator using attributeSeparator (see below).

fixed

fixed attribute layout

separated

separated attribute layout

attributeSeparator

Defines the attribute/field separator.

any character

use this character as attribute separator

<Tab>

use tabulator as attribute separator

attributePattern

A RegEx pattern to parse the record content into the attributes using capture groups.

a valid regular expression

^(.?)(://)([A-Za-z0-9.])(:[0-9])(/.)$

evaluationOrder

Defines the order in which the association of the classes starting on same parent class must be processed, see (25.1) Flat File Adapter Parsing Process.

any integer

ignoreEmptyRecords

Boolean value for ignoring empty records. If set to true, no item will be generated, if none of the defined attributes or sub records have any content.

Note, that a record containing only empty Strings is not empty – in opposition to a record composed from NULLs. See ignoreEmptyStrings below to skip processing of records containing only empty Strings.

true

ignore empty records

false (default)

process empty records

ignoreEmptyStrings

Boolean value for ignoring empty string attributes. If set to true, empty string values will be processed to NULL.
Use this tag in combination with ignoreEmptyRecords to skip processing of records containing only empty Strings.

true

ignore empty string values

false (default)

preserve empty string values

lineNumber

Specifies the number of a record in the file. The first record is lineNumber=1, the second lineNumber=2, etc.

any integer

pattern

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any character

a valid regular expression

^Pattern.*

suppressEscaping

Boolean value to suppress escaping. If suppressEscaping on a <<FlatFileRecord>> is true, <<FlatFileComplexAttribute>> that are part of this record will inherit this setting.

true

attribute values of this record will not be un-escaped (parser) or escaped (composer)

false

escaping/un-escaping is not suppressed

parseMacro

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any valid macro expression (see Macro Expressions)

GetCounter(AUTO0)

composeMacro

pattern

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any character

^Pattern.*

a valid regular expression

condition

A condition that must evaluate true if the record exists. The condition can refer to a self object which represents the current state of the parent.

any valid conditional expression

self.UNS.exists()

evaluationOrder

Defines the order in which the associations starting on same parent class must be processed, see (25.1) Flat File Adapter Parsing Process.

any integer

offset

Define the position of this record in the flat file, starting with 0 for the first record and always relative to the parent element.

any integer

format

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order

The evaluation order of the attributes. If offset is not used, order reflects the field number within the record.

any integer

offset

The relative position of the field in respect of the other fields in the record, e.g. field number 3 has offset = 2.

any integer

suppressEscaping

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parseMacro

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any valid macro expression (see Macro Expressions)

GetCounter(0)

composeMacro

data

Blob

in

(

)

Provide the flat file data to be parsed.
Alternatively, you can specify a path to a flat file in the file system (see parameter name). Note, that the name parameter takes priority over data.

name

String

in

(

)

Specify a full path to the flat file to be parsed.
Alternatively, you can parse the flat file from a Blob object (see parameter data). Note, that the name parameter takes priority over data.

tmp/myFile.txt

encoding

String

in

Provide the encoding of the file to be parsed as specified in the (25.1) Charset Definitions appendix.

any valid encoding (see (25.1) Charset Definitions)

UTF-8

default

ISO-8859-1 (Latin1)

locale

NumbersLocale

in

Specify how number values will be treated, when parsed from the flat file (decimal point, currency symbol, ...). You can overwrite the system locales here, if the file was written with divergent locales. Refer to (25.1) Number Formatting for more information.

<any>

<<FlatFile>>class

out

The adapter returns a parsed flat file object. The class defining the type of this object should have stereotype <<FlatFile>> and should depict the structure of the file.