Read File

The Read File activity is a synchronous activity that is used to read a file and place its contents into the output of the activity.

General

The General tab has the following fields.

Field Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property Description
Name None The name to be displayed as the label for the activity in the process.
Filename Yes The name of the file.
Exclude File Content None Specifies not to load the data from this file into the output of the activity.

If selected, the contents of this file are not available to the subsequent activities in the process.

Read as Literal Value This field is available only if the Exclude File Content check box is not selected.

The type of the content in the file. It can be either Text or Binary.

Include Timestamp None Select the check box to display timestamp, in addition to the date.

Description

Provide a short description about the activity.

Input

The following is the input of the activity.

Input Item Datatype Description
fileName string The name and path of the file to read.
encoding string The character encoding of the text files.

This element is available only when the Read as field on the General tab is set to Text.

You can specify the encoding names supported by Java in this element. If this element is not specified, the default encoding of the Java Virtual Machine used by the process engine is used.

Output

The following is the output of the activity.

Output Item Datatype Description
fileInfo complex This element contains fullName, fileName, location, type, readProtected, writeProtected, size, and lastModified data.
fullName string The name of the file with the path information.
fileName string The name of the file without the path information.
location string The path to the file.
configuredFileName string An optional element. It is not populated by this activity.
type string The file type.
readProtected boolean Signifies whether the file or directory is protected from reading
writeProtected boolean Signifies whether the file or directory is protected from writing
size integer The size of the file in bytes.
lastModified string The timestamp indicating when the file was last modified.
fileContent complex The element containing the textContent data.
textContent string The content of the file (text files), if the Exclude File Content check box is not selected on the General tab.
binaryContent binary The content of the file (binary files), if the Exclude File Content check box is not selected on the General tab. Only available when Content as is set to Binary.
encoding string The character encoding for the file when the value specified in the Read as field in the General tab is Text.

Fault

The Fault tab lists the possible exceptions generated by this activity. For more information about error codes and the corrective action to take, see the TIBCO BusinessWorks™ Container Edition Error Codes guide.

Fault Generated When..
FileNotFoundException The file does not exist.
UnsupportedEncodingException The content of the text file is invalid, and the content of the file is read into the process data.
FileIOException An input/output exception occurred when trying to read the file.