12 Exporting data to files

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

• Set up a file exporter

In this exercise you will create an export of the customer summary report, to a file:

1. In your model, to add a new file exporter hover over the stream Customer Summary by Region, and press  Add a new File Exporter
2. Give the new exporter the Name: Send Customer Summary Report
3. Press 
4. You will now see the new file exporter on the modelling pane
5. Save your model layout. 

As well as exporting the file to a directory on the PhixFlow server, you will email the file to yourself. Before you set this up, you need to update the user Train with your email address:

1. In the top-right hand of the application, go to the User menu
2. Select My User Details
3. Update the Email Address with your email address
4. Press  to save your changes

Complete settings for the file exporter.

1. Double-click on the new file exporter icon on your model view
2. Tick the flag Enabled

3. In the field File Name (Expr) enter the value:

   "customerSummaryByRegion.txt"

4. In the field Output Directory (Expr) enter:

   "customerReports/customerSummaryByRegion"

5. Tick the flag Overwrite existing file
6. Tick the flag Header
   
7. Go to the Send By Email section, and set the following:
   
   • Email from: system@PhixFlow.com
   • Subject Expression: "Export of customerSummaryByRegion.txt at " + now()
   • Message Expression: "Please find file customerSummaryByRegion.txt attached. Generated at " + now()
   • Attach File: tick
8. Go to the User Recipients section
   • Press Show the list of Users
   • Drag the user Train (the user you are currently logged in as) into the list of recipients

9. In the file exporter configuration form, press 

   Note that the pipe to the file exporter is dotted – this means that it is a Push pipe. When linking a stream to a file exporter you must always use a push pipe. This is because you cannot run a file exporter on its own; it must always be driven from a stream (otherwise, it has no data to process)

10. Run analysis on the stream Customer Summary by Region
11. Check the log messages generated in the console – in particular scroll to the end; you should see messages telling you that a file has been exported
12. Now find your file - you should have received an email with the file attached
13. The file has also been exported to the PhixFlow server