Illustrated in the below image is a flow where the Fixed Width reader step is used to read data. The Filter step is used to filter for specific data requirements and a Buffer destination step to store the data in.
Adding a Fixed Width Reader Step
To add a Fixed Width Reader step in a flow, follow the below instructions:
1. Click on the highlighted icon as shown in the below image.
2. The below page will appear. Select or search for a Reader step to pull out the source data. Click on the Reader tab and select Fixed Width as shown in the image below.
Configuring a Fixed Width Reader step
Illustrated below is the configuration that is available in the Fixed Width Reader step.
Header Length section – The length of the header in the file. There often no headers in fixed width files, so the Header Length is set to 0 by default when this step is added.
Fields section – Used to map fields from the fixed width file. The fields path have to be in the same order the data in the fixed width file is in.
To add a field, click on the highlighted plus icon, fill in the details and click on the tick on the far right of the field. The Fields configuration table contains the following columns that must be set.
Length column – The length of the characters that are in the data.
To Path column – Name of the field that gets returned.
Type column – The data type. This could be a String, Number, Boolean or any other data type required. Select the required from the dropdown list.
Format column – The format to give for the value such as a date format.
Trim column – Remove any specified characters from the field. For example, ‘/s’ will remove spaces.
Left Trim – Remove any specified characters from the left of the field. For example, ‘/s’ will remove spaces.
Right Trim – Remove any specified characters from the right of the field. For example, ‘/s’ will remove spaces.
Row Delimiter field – The characters indicating the end of a row.
End Of File Delimiter – The determine characters indicating the end of the file.
Using a Fixed Width Reader step
The image below is an example of the data that is in a fixed width file (text file).
To use a Fixed Width Reader step, follow these instructions below:
Click on the play button on the Fixed Width Reader step as highlighted in the image below.
Click the highlighted are in the image below to upload a Fixed Width file.
Click the Test button as shown in the image below.
The image below shows the configurations used in the Fixed Width Reader step.
The below image is the output of the data.
