Creating a logical File resource

You must create and configure a logical File resource and bind it to a File Access resource, if you want to access files as a source of publication and subscription. The File resource can also be used in a stub to consume one or more files in a directory.

Before you begin

You must have completed the following tasks:

About this task

By using the publish and subscribe actions in Rational® Integration Tester, you can create files that are used to trigger a system process or read to validate the expected output from a system.

Procedure

  1. Open the Logical View of the Architecture School perspective.
  2. Create a file resource in any of the following ways:
    • Right-click an existing component or on the empty drawing palette, and then select New > Files > File from the menu.
    • Select an existing component or click the empty drawing palette, and then select Files > File from the toolbar.
    Note: Each file resource can be bound to a unique File Access physical resource that can be selected and configured subsequently.
    The New File dialog box is displayed.
    Image of the New File dialog box.
  3. Enter a name for the logical File resource in the Name field.
  4. Click OK.

    The logical File resource that you created is displayed on the canvas of the Logical View. The file resource provides read and write access to the contents of a file on the file system.

  5. Double-click the logical File resource.
    The File resource dialog box is displayed.Image of the configuring the physical file transport dialog box.

    The name that you entered for the logical File resource is displayed in the Name field.

  6. Perform any of the following actions:
    • Change or retain the name for the logical File resource in the Name field.
    • Change the parent of the File resource by clicking Parent, and then select the logical component that contains the File resource.
  7. Perform the following actions in the Settings tab:
    1. Enter the path to the folder that contains the files to be written or read or click Browse to locate and select a directory on the local computer in the Directory field.
      The field requires the full path to a directory of files to be written (publish) or read (subscribe).
      Notes:
      • The directory specified on the logical File for an FTP is always relative to the user home directory.
        Image of the result screen for an FTP when Test Transport is clicked.
      • For an SFTP, the directory can either be relative to the home directory of the user or explicitly described through an absolute path.
        Image of the result screen for an SFTP when Test Transport is clicked.
      • You cannot use wildcard characters in the directory path.
    2. Enter a matching file name pattern, if required, which determines the files to be used within the directory in the File Name Pattern field.
      Note: The file name pattern can contain the wildcard character * to match a series of zero or more characters.
    3. Select the encoding that is to be applied to the files from the list in the File Encoding field.
    4. Click Test Transport to test the connection to the file system that you configured.
  8. Configure the following settings in the Consuming tab to configure how Rational® Integration Tester treats the contents of the file:
    The configuration options for the transport Consuming tab are described in the following table:
    Last Modification Delay Enter the elapsed time in seconds from the time a file was last modified before it is eligible for consumption.
    Ignore last modification in subscribe Select this option to match files in a subscribe action that are consumed even if they were not modified. The file system is queried without waiting for the next scheduled poll.
    Content Packetizing Select how you want to packetize the file content.
    Note: No further information is required if you selected the All available bytes and No Content (Header only) options.
    The available options are as follows:
    Length
    Iterate over the contents of a file to extract multiple records.
    Fixed Length Each record is of the same designated size.
    Token The string of characters that marks the start of each record.
    Offset Each record starts after the entered number of bytes.
    Prefix The number of bytes or characters at the start of the record that denote the length of the record.

    When you use the Token, Offset, or Prefix modes, the following options control how the actual packet length is read from the stream of information.

    Size The number of bytes or characters that contain the length information.
    Format Indicates whether the prefix values are be treated as raw values (Bytes) or translated from their ASCII equivalent (ASCII).
    Swap Bytes Indicates whether the transport swaps the order of the bytes before it treats the data as the length of the record.
    Length includes prefix Indicates whether the length includes the prefix (information about the length of the message).
    Propagate prefix Indicates whether the prefix portion of the message is propagated to subscribers.
    Delimited
    Iterate over the contents of a file to extract multiple records that are designated by start and end tokens.
    Start Token A series of characters that denotes the start of a record.
    End Token A series of characters that denotes the end of a record.
    Token
    Is similar to the Delimited option, but can be used when you need to specify more data after the end token.
    Start Token A series of characters that denotes the start of a record.
    End Token A series of characters that denotes the end of a record.
    End Token Data Length An optional quantity of data that can be present following the end token.
    Split
    Packetize (split) the contents of files that are based on a user-defined delimiter.

    You can select one of the existing delimiter types (New Line, Tab, Space), or select Other and enter the delimiter characters in the field provided.

    When reading records, you must enable the Process last empty packet option if the record ends with your delimiter and you want to process one more packet as an empty string (that is, ""). Disable this option if the delimiter indicates that there are no more packets.

    When you are writing to a record, the packetizer writes out the delimiter as the last character as the default action, so that the record ends with a delimiter. For example: "…|myfieldvalue|".
  9. Select the new line character settings in the Producing tab:
    The configuration options for the transport Producing tab are described in the following table:

    New Line
    For publishing actions (writing), select the new line character to use as follows:
    • Native (uses the default option based on the platform)
    • Unix-like (line feed)
    • Windows™ (carriage return - line feed)
    • Mac (carriage return)
    • Binary
  10. Perform the following steps in the Compare tab to specify the file schema to be applied when comparing files:
    1. Click Browse in the File Schema field to locate and select a file that contains the schema to compare.
    2. Click OK to select the resource.
  11. Bind the logical File to the physical File Access by performing the following steps:
    1. Right-click the file resource to bind from the Logical View.
    2. Click Set Binding in > <Environment> > to File Access<credentials-host>.

      You must select the physical File Access that you want to bind with the physical File resource. If you have multiple File Access resources that you created, you must create different logical File resources for each File Access resource.

Results

The logical File resource is added to the project and displayed in the Logical View, with the name that you entered.

What to do next

You must create a service component and operation. See Creating a service component and Creating an operation.