FileSerializer Activity

General Tab

The File Serializer activity consists of the General, Description, Advanced, Input, and Fault tabs.

On the General tab, you can specify the required parameters before you use this activity. The General tab contains the following fields:

Field	Literal Value/Module Property?	Visual Diff?	Description
Name	No	Yes	The name to be displayed as the label for the activity in the process.
Configuration Resource	Yes	Yes	The reference to the Files for Unix and Windows Resource Configuration.
Schema	No	Yes	Schema is based on the XSD generated by the Files for Unix and Windows Resource Configuration selected in Configuration Resource field. Out of multiple schemas listed, only one schema is picked and processed at runtime.
Wip Creation Mode	No	Yes	The creation mode of the file in the working directory. The File Serializer activity uses the working directory to create the file. Based on the semantics of Wip Creation mode options, the file is moved to the output directory with the following options: Append messages to file, close on Timer Input records from multiple jobs are appended to a file created in the working directory. The file is closed and moved to the output directory on receiving the timer event specified in the Elapsed field. And then a new file is created in the working directory. One job per file Input records that are present in each job are written to a file and then moved to the output directory.
Output Creation Mode	No	Yes	Two options are available: Overwrite (always creates new file) Overwrites the file, when moving a file from the working directory to the output directory. Append (if same file name exists) Appends the text, when moving a file from the working directory to the output directory.
File Name	Yes	Yes	The name of the output file that is to be created. Note: The filename cannot contain path information.
Close file after time elapsed (minutes)	Yes	Yes	The amount of time before the file is closed in the working directory. You can type a specific time in this field or use a module property. This field is available only when you select Append messages to file, Close on timer in the Wip Creation Mode list.

Description Tab

On the Description tab, you can enter a short description for the activity.

The Visual Diff is supported for the Description tab.

Advanced Tab

The Advanced tab contains the following sections:

Processing
Processing Script
Options for modifying output Filename
Encoding

The following table describes the fields in the Processing section of the Advanced tab for the File Serializer activity.

Field	Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?	Visual Diff?	Description
Working Directory	Yes	No	Specifies the directory where contents for the actual output file are composed from input records. When the files generated by File Serializer activity are independent of each other, the activities share the working, output and error directories. Otherwise, the directories must be unique. Note: On Unix, the processing directories such as the working directory, and the done or output directory are required to be on the same file system.
Output Directory	Yes	No	Specifies the directory where files in the working directory are moved to.
Error Directory	Yes	No	When an error occurs while moving a file from working directory to output directory, file in the working directory is moved to the error directory. For One job per file in WIP Creation Mode, if the file is already present in the working directory, it is moved to error directory with timestamp added in the file name.
Progress Directory	Yes	No	Specifies the directory where the progress file is written to. If no directory is specified in this field, the progress file is created in the directory where the plug-in is started.
Toggle Child Records Ordering	No	No	When it is set to TRUE, the sequence of the child order is reversed in the generated file. When it is set to FALSE, the sequence of the child orders does not change. Note: Users can only reverse the order of the root parent's children. Order of the children of child record cannot be reversed.

The following table describes the fields in the Processing Script section of the Advanced tab for the File Serializer activity.

Field	Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?	Visual Diff?	Description
Post Processing Script File	Yes	No	Specify the name of the script that needs to be executed after the input file is processed by the plug-in. Click Browse to locate and load the script. For file serializer activity, when using a post-processing script that did not resolve to the associated program or executable, the activity is unable to invoke successfully the post-processing script. To avoid this issue, when specifying the post-processing script please follow the convention, command::command_exec,command_file Example: command::C:\perl\bin\perl.exe,c:\temp\script.pl When specifying the command_exec and command_file arguments, you must specify the absolute path. For more information see Pre and Post Processing Scripts
Post Processing Arguments	Yes	No	Arguments you want to pass to the postprocessing script. Arguments are strings and are optional. The sequence of arguments passed to the postprocessing script is determined as follows: The argument sequence contains the name of the file, the arguments specified in the postprocessing arguments, and the status. The status succeeds if the serializer processes the file successfully. The status fails if the serializer has problems (for example, parsing) processing the file.

Field

Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?

Visual Diff?

Description

Post Processing Script File

Yes

No

Specify the name of the script that needs to be executed after the input file is processed by the plug-in. Click Browse to locate and load the script.

For file serializer activity, when using a post-processing script that did not resolve to the associated program or executable, the activity is unable to invoke successfully the post-processing script. To avoid this issue, when specifying the post-processing script please follow the convention, command::command_exec,command_file Example: command::C:\perl\bin\perl.exe,c:\temp\script.pl

When specifying the command_exec and command_file arguments, you must specify the absolute path.

For more information see Pre and Post Processing Scripts

Post Processing Arguments

Yes

No

Arguments you want to pass to the postprocessing script. Arguments are strings and are optional. The sequence of arguments passed to the postprocessing script is determined as follows:

The argument sequence contains the name of the file, the arguments specified in the postprocessing arguments, and the status. The status succeeds if the serializer processes the file successfully. The status fails if the serializer has problems (for example, parsing) processing the file.

The following table describes the fields in the Options for modifying output Filename section of the Advanced tab for the File Serializer activity.

Field	Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?	Visual Diff?	Description
Append	No	No	Three options are available: None Does not append anything to the filename. Timestamp Appends a timestamp to the filename. The format is YYYYMMDDHHMMSSmm. Selecting this option activates the Location field. Sequence Number Appends a sequence number to the filename. Selecting this option activates the Location and Sequence Number Width fields.
Location	No	No	Two options are available: Prefix Appends the timestamp or sequence number to the filename as a prefix. Suffix Appends the timestamp or sequence number to the filename as a suffix. A period (.) is assumed to be a separator between the prefix and suffix.
Sequence Number Width	No	No	Specifies the width of the sequence number. For example, when you select 4 as the width of the sequence number, the number that is appended to the file is 0000. The sequence number begins with 0 and is incremented for each file that is moved to the output directory. Upon reaching the maximum value for a given width, the sequence number rolls over. When the plug-in is restarted, File Serializer activity remembers the previous sequence number and continues from there. Sequence Number is stored in Progress File

Field

Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?

Visual Diff?

Description

Append

No

Three options are available:

None
Does not append anything to the filename.
Timestamp
Appends a timestamp to the filename. The format is YYYYMMDDHHMMSSmm. Selecting this option activates the Location field.
Sequence Number
Appends a sequence number to the filename. Selecting this option activates the Location and Sequence Number Width fields.

Location

No

Two options are available:

Prefix
Appends the timestamp or sequence number to the filename as a prefix.
Suffix
Appends the timestamp or sequence number to the filename as a suffix.

A period (.) is assumed to be a separator between the prefix and suffix.

Sequence Number Width

No

Specifies the width of the sequence number. For example, when you select 4 as the width of the sequence number, the number that is appended to the file is 0000. The sequence number begins with 0 and is incremented for each file that is moved to the output directory. Upon reaching the maximum value for a given width, the sequence number rolls over.

When the plug-in is restarted, File Serializer activity remembers the previous sequence number and continues from there. Sequence Number is stored in Progress File

The following table describes the fields in the Encoding section of the Advanced tab for the File Serializer activity.

Field	Literal Value/Process Property/Module Property?	Visual Diff?	Description
File Content Encoding	No	No	Provides aliases for the following commonly used encoding for file contents: ASCII, ISO8859-1, UTF16_BigEndian, UTF16_LittleEndian, UTF-8, Shift JIS(CP943), Shift JIS (TIBCO), EUC-JP, Big5, and Other. Note: When an invalid or unsupported encoding string value is specified, an error is displayed at run time.
File Content Encoding Other	Yes	No	This field is available only when you select Other in the File Content Encoding list. For more information, see File Content Encoding
End of Line	No	No	Specifies the line separator to be used in the output file System The separator is runtime dependent. It follows the DOS convention on Microsoft platforms or the UNIX convention on UNIX platforms. DOS A carriage return and line feed. UNIX A line feed. Unicode Unicode Line Separator. Use only in conjunction with UTF8, UTF16BE, or UTF16LE file encoding. User Defined You can define the characters to mark the end of line. Specify the characters in the User Defined EOL field.
User Defined EOL	Yes	No	This field is available only when you select the User Defined option from the End of Line field. Enter the characters to mark the end of a line.

Input Tab

On the Input tab, you can view the input data for the File Serializer activity. The values in the Input tab are populated based on the schema selected in the Schema field.

Fault Tab

The Fault tab, has the following exceptions:

FileSerializerException

FileSerializerException will throw an error and cause the activity to stop. It contains the following fields:

Field	Type	Description
msg	string	The error message description returned by the plug-in.
msgCode	string	The error code returned by the plug-in.
errorMessage	string	The error message returned by the plug-in.

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