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

• Create file collectors and streams to read data from files into PhixFlow
• Run analysis on Streams
• View stream data

Create a new file collector

Before starting this exercise, you will need to download a pack of files. These are available here: train.zip. Save these to a convenient location on your local drive, and unzip. Throughout the course, these will be referred to as the input files.

A file containing details of customer addresses can be found in the input files, at: 

[unzipped location]\inputData\AddressCheck\custAddrFiles\input\custAddr_20090322_1.txt

Open this file and have a look at the data in it. Notice, in particular, that there is a header line in the file with the column names of the data in the file.

You will now add a new file collector to your model to read this file into PhixFlow.

1. In the model toolbar, drag  File Collector onto the modelling pane.
2. In the new file collector settings tab that opens, enter the Name: Customer Addresses.
3. Click  OK.

4. You will now see the new file collector on the model.

   In the model toolbar, click  Save to make sure that the new file collector will be shown when you re-open this model. Remember to save the model layout every time you add a new modelling component.

Set up a file collector and stream

1. Hover over your new file collector, and press .
2. In the file explorer, go to: …\inputData\AddressCheck\custAddrFiles\input.
3. Select the file custAddr_20090322_1.txt and press Open.
4. In the Upload Managed File form, press Upload.
5. You will see a stream appear on your model – PhixFlow has automatically configured the file collector and the stream to load the file into PhixFlow.

Pause file data

In this course you will build up a model by adding components and running them. In PhixFlow, running a component causes each of its inputs to also run. This is so that you only need to run the final component in a model and it will, in turn, run everything you need to populate it, all the way back to the raw inputs to PhixFlow (via file collectors and database collectors).

In this case, once you have loaded the file, you will "pause" the file data so that you do not need to reload the file from your computer every time you run the model.
We will cover pausing components in PhixFlow in more detail in the Modelling Concepts course.
To pause the data loaded from the file:

• Hover your mouse pointer over the stream (the icon  on your model) CustomerAddresses.
• In the pop-up toolbar, click Static.

Run analysis on the stream

You will now run analysis on your new stream. Analysis is the process that does all PhixFlow's data processing.
To run analysis:

• Hover over the stream.
• In the pop-up toolbar, select the  Run Analysis. This will run the stream, and read in data from the file of customer addresses via the file collector.
• You will get a confirmation message when this has completed. We will look at messages in the console later.

View stream data

To view the data you just loaded:

• Hover over the stream, and in the pop-up toolbar, click  Stream Views.
• In the drop-down list, select   Default View.