File Exporter

Use a file exporter to create files with a format that matches that of the input stream.

To open a file exporter's settings tab, double-click on:

the file exporter name in the repository browser
the file exporter icon in a model.

The toolbar has the standard icons. The settings tab has the following sections:

Field Description

Basic Settings

Name Enter a name for this file exporter.

Enabled Tick to indicate you have completed the settings and the file exporter is ready to use.

File Name (Expr)

Enter an expression to generate the name of the file being exported. It must evaluate to a plain text string, and can include text expressions. You can use the internal variables:

_fromDate: the start date of the period of the stream being processed.
_toDate: the end date of the period of the the stream being processed.
_inputMultiplier: the value returned by the input multiplier, if one is being used.

Output Directory (Expr)

Optionally, enter an expression to generate the name of the directory into which generated files should be written. It must evaluate to a plain text string.

As this is an expression field, you must surround plain text paths with quotes.

Directory separators must always be a forward slash /, for example "C:/data/address/export/". Never use a backslash \ even if the output file will be written to a directory on a Windows operating system.

You can use the internal variables:

_fromDate: the start date of the period of the stream being processed.
_toDate: the end date of the period of the the stream being processed.
_inputMultiplier: the value returned by the input multiplier, if one is being used.

If you do not enter an expression or if the expression evaluates to blank, when you run the analysis model:

PhixFlow does not save the generated file to disk
PhixFlow checks that you have completed the options in the Send By Email section.

FTP Site

Select an FTP site to which the generated file will be moved. For details about how to add sites to this list, see FTP Site. FTP directory paths must be the full path to the file because PhixFlow ignores the local machine's base directory specified in System Configuration.

If you do not select a site, PhixFlow assumes the output file will be saved on the local machine.

Ignore Base Directory

When this check box is unticked, the base directory is prepended to the location specified in Output Directory. The local machine's base directory is set in the System Configuration tab → System Directories section.

When ticked, PhixFlow uses the location specified in Output Directory as the full path for the export file.

Export File As

You can export files in the following formats:

Comma Separated Values: Data will be read from a single push pipe and written to CSV files.

Excel Spreadsheet: Data will be read from a single push pipe and written to Excel Spreadsheet files.

If the push pipe has a drill-down view with an Excel template specified, this will be used to export the data. Optionally, use the Excel Template field for this file exporter. Specify an Excel template, which will supersede any template specified on the push pipe drill-down view.

If you specify an Excel Template, each output file is generated by copying the Excel template file and overwriting the values in the first worksheet. In this case, the type of file generated is the same as that of the template.

If you do not specify an Excel Template, each output file is generated by creating a new, empty Excel file and writing values to the first and only worksheet. In this case, the file type is the extension generated by the File Name Expression field.

.xls will generate a file in Microsoft Office 2003 Excel format.

.xlsx or .xlsm will generate a file in Microsoft Office 2007 Excel format.

Any other extension will generate a file in the format configured in System Configuration → Default Export Excel Version..

Excel Spreadsheet (Multiple Inputs): Data will be read from all input pipes and written to Excel spreadsheet files. At least one input pipe must be a push pipe.

The Excel Template Expression must evaluate to the name of an Excel template file. The Excel template must be annotated with instructions to the exporter to insert data from any of the input pipes into specific ranges of cells. See File Exporter Excel Multi-input.

HTML File: Data will be read from a single push pipe and written to HTML files.

If the push pipe has a drill-down view with an Excel template specified, this will be used to export the data. Optionally, use the Excel Template field for this file exporter. Specify an Excel template, which will supersede any template specified on the push pipe drill-down view.

If you specify an Excel Template, each output file is generated by copying the Excel template file and overwriting the values in the first worksheet. In this case, the type of file generated is the same as that of the template.

If you do not specify an Excel Template, each output file is generated by creating a new, empty Excel file and writing values to the first and only worksheet, then writing that worksheet out as HTML.

Overwrite existing file The file exporter overwrites existing files with the same name as the file to be generated. This can be useful where you want PhixFlow to replace a file at regular intervals, for example to update the content of an HTML page on an intranet.

Maximum Records per File Enter the maximum number of records that will be written to each file.

Header Tick this box to include a header line in the exported files. The header row contains the name of each field.

Character Set

Select the character encoding to be used:

utf-8
utf-16
ascii
other - see Other Character Set, below
cp1252
iso-8859-1

Other Character Set Available when Character Set = Other. Enter a different character set. For the full list of available character sets, see the Oracle Java documentation about encoding; you can use the canonical names from either column.

Line Separator Style

When PhixFlow generates the file, it uses the line separator configured in System Configuration → Advanced section → Line Separator Style. If this is not set, Phixflow uses the default for the operating system on which the PhixFlow server is running.

You may want to generate an export file that uses a different line separator, for example if PhixFlow runs on Linux, but the file will be sent to Windows users. To set a different line separator, select:

Windows
Unix
Other - see Line Separator Chars, below

Line Separator Chars

Available when Line Separator Style = Other. Enter either a single character or multiple characters to use as a new line separator. The characters may be the literal characters or a sequence from the table below. These sequences are useful if the required separator character is not valid to be stored in the database.

Sequence	Description
\t	tab
\n	newline
\r	carriage return
\f	form feed
\u + hexadecimal code	unicode character specified by the hexadecimal code

Column Separator

Select a value from the drop-down list.

Comma
Space
Tab
Other - see Separator Character, below

Separator Character Available when Column Separator = Other. Enter a custom column separator or a sequence of multiple characters.

Excel Template

Available when Export File As is one of following:

Excel Spreadsheet (Multiple Inputs): enter an expression that evaluates to an Excel template.
Excel Spreadsheet or HTML File: enter the name of the Excel template.

Evaluate Formulae Before Saving File Tick this box to generate the export file and then to evaluate any formula in the spreadsheet before saving the file. When a user opens the file in Excel, the calculations have already been done.

Quote Style

Select a value from the drop-down list.

Double Quote
Single Quote
Back Tick
Other - see Quote Character below
None

Quote Character Available when Quote Style = Other. Enter a custom quote style character.

Input Multiplier

Input Multiplier The input multiplier expression should evaluate to a list of one or more values. For each value in the list, the internal variable _inputMultiplier will be set to that value and the file export process will be repeated i.e. the pull pipes will be read and the data from those pipes processed to generate file output data, and a new export file will be written.

Inputs

A list of pipes into the file exporter.

Send By Email

In this section you can set up an automated email to be sent when a file is exported, optionally with the exported file attached. Create the list of recipients in the User Recipients section.

Emails are generated in an outbound queue and actually sent by a separate email demon process. If the email demon cannot send emails immediately, for example because the email server is down, the email demon process will try to re-send periodically until either it succeeds or the timeout period has passed.

If you specified an Input Multiplier for this file exporter, several export files may be generated. Each file may be assigned to several recipients. The subject and body expressions may also evaluate to different values each time (for example if _inputMultiplier is included in the expression). In this case PhixFlow will try to generate as few emails as possible by applying the following rules:

For each recipient identify the files to be sent to that recipient.
If the subject and body message calculated for each file is the same, generate a single email and attach all files to that email.
If the subject and body messages for each file are different, generate one email for each subject and body message pair. Attach to each email all the files for which the subject and body expression evaluated to the same subject and body message.

Email From The generated email will appear to be from this email address. An expression that must evaluate to a plain text string.

Subject Expression Enter a PhixFlow expression to create the email subject. Must evaluate to a plain text string.

Attach File Whether or not the exported file should be attached to the email sent.

Future Attachments Expression

This expression is evaluated to give a list of external files that should be be attached to the email.

These files are created outside PhixFlow, and may or may not exist when the file exporter runs. If the files don't exist, the generated email will be held in the output queue until either they are created by some external process, or a timeout period has passed.

Zip File

Available when Attach File is selected or Future Attachments Expression is set. This specifies whether or not the attached file(s) will be zipped.

Message Expression Enter a PhixFlow expression to create the message body of the email. Must evaluate to a plain text string.

Encryption

Available when Send By Email section → Zip File is selected. Set whether exported zip attachments are encrypted, along with the encryption parameters and the password which must then be used to open the files.

Encryption Type

The following encryption types are supported:

leave blank: If the Encryption Type is blank, then the file will not be encrypted.
Standard Zip: Standard ZIP 2.0 encryption is the encryption type that is accepted by most applications, and is the weakest supported encryption type.
AES 128-bit: All variants of AES encryption are stronger than Standard Zip encryption, but AES encryption is the weakest type of AES encryption supported and is accepted by fewer applications.
AES 256-bit: AES 256-bit is the strongest type of AES encryption supported.

Password

Email recipients must enter this password in order to open any exported zipped files.

When setting the password, you should make a note of the password used and communicate it separately to the recipients of the emails to be sent out. It is not possible to display the current password.

Confirm Password This must match the main Password.

User Recipients

Notification

This table has the standard toolbar plus the extra button Users.

To add users to this table, click Users to display a list of users. Select users and drag them into the table.

Name: The user name.
Email As: The email send-type.
Expression: A PhixFlow expression.

To change any of the data, double-click on the row to open the User Notification Rule tab.

Recipient Expressions

TO Expression

Enter a PhixFlow expression to calculate the recipients for the email. The recipients returned by this expression will be added to the list of recipients returned by the individual User Notification Rule on the Email Recipients section.

For example to simply enter a list of email addresses, you can enter an expression such as: ["john.smith@acme.com","jane.doe@corp.com"]
The result of the expression must be:

either a single plain text string that should be a valid email address
or a list object that contains one or more strings, each of which must be a valid email address.

CC Expression As in the TO Expression, the list of users returned by this expression will be included on the CC line on the email.

BCC Expression As in the TO Expression, the list of users returned by this expression will be included in the BCC line on the email.

Analysis Models

A list of the analysis models that use this file exporter.

Description

Description Optionally, enter a description for this file exporter.

For help about other settings, see Form Descriptions.