Chapter 106. Flatpack DataFormat
Available as of Camel version 2.1
The Flatpack component ships with the Flatpack data format that can be used to format between fixed width or delimited text messages to a List of rows as Map.
-
marshal = from
List<Map<String, Object>>toOutputStream(can be converted toString) -
unmarshal = from
java.io.InputStream(such as aFileorString) to ajava.util.Listas anorg.apache.camel.component.flatpack.DataSetListinstance.
The result of the operation will contain all the data. If you need to process each row one by one you can split the exchange, using Splitter.
Notice: The Flatpack library does currently not support header and trailers for the marshal operation.
106.1. Options
The Flatpack dataformat supports 9 options which are listed below.
| Name | Default | Java Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| definition |
| The flatpack pzmap configuration file. Can be omitted in simpler situations, but its preferred to use the pzmap. | |
| fixed |
|
| Delimited or fixed. Is by default false = delimited |
| ignoreFirstRecord |
|
| Whether the first line is ignored for delimited files (for the column headers). Is by default true. |
| textQualifier |
| If the text is qualified with a character. Uses quote character by default. | |
| delimiter |
|
| The delimiter char (could be ; , or similar) |
| allowShortLines |
|
| Allows for lines to be shorter than expected and ignores the extra characters |
| ignoreExtraColumns |
|
| Allows for lines to be longer than expected and ignores the extra characters. |
| parserFactoryRef |
| References to a custom parser factory to lookup in the registry | |
| contentTypeHeader |
|
| Whether the data format should set the Content-Type header with the type from the data format if the data format is capable of doing so. For example application/xml for data formats marshalling to XML, or application/json for data formats marshalling to JSon etc. |
106.2. Usage
To use the data format, simply instantiate an instance and invoke the marshal or unmarshal operation in the route builder:
FlatpackDataFormat fp = new FlatpackDataFormat();
fp.setDefinition(new ClassPathResource("INVENTORY-Delimited.pzmap.xml"));
...
from("file:order/in").unmarshal(df).to("seda:queue:neworder");
The sample above will read files from the order/in folder and unmarshal the input using the Flatpack configuration file INVENTORY-Delimited.pzmap.xml that configures the structure of the files. The result is a DataSetList object we store on the SEDA queue.
FlatpackDataFormat df = new FlatpackDataFormat();
df.setDefinition(new ClassPathResource("PEOPLE-FixedLength.pzmap.xml"));
df.setFixed(true);
df.setIgnoreFirstRecord(false);
from("seda:people").marshal(df).convertBodyTo(String.class).to("jms:queue:people");
In the code above we marshal the data from a Object representation as a List of rows as Maps. The rows as Map contains the column name as the key, and the the corresponding value. This structure can be created in Java code from e.g. a processor. We marshal the data according to the Flatpack format and convert the result as a String object and store it on a JMS queue.
106.3. Dependencies
To use Flatpack in your camel routes you need to add the a dependency on camel-flatpack which implements this data format.
If you use maven you could just add the following to your pom.xml, substituting the version number for the latest & greatest release (see the download page for the latest versions).
<dependency> <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId> <artifactId>camel-flatpack</artifactId> <version>x.x.x</version> </dependency>
