From FTP

Using +COMPONENT, import the From FTP component.

Fields marked with an asterisk are required

Connection Configurations

• Protocol*: specify the protocol you’ll be using (FTP, FTPS, SFTP)

• Server*: the server you’ll be connecting with

• Port*: the port to use

• Username*: the remote user to login as. This account will need permissions to read, delete, and/or move files to the specified FTPDirectory

• Certificate: the name of your certificate file, if in use. By default, this should be a PEM certificate. The default configurations can be changed by modifying the net.[protocol].init function directly in the script. This configuration is only applicable for FTP and FTPS.

• PrivateKey: the name of your private key file, if in use. By default, this should be a PEM certificate and not be password-locked. The default configurations can be changed by modifying the net.[protocol].init function directly in the script.

• Password: the password to authenticate with

• RetryCount: the number of times to retry the connection if it drops. By default, it will retry 3 times.

FTP Workflow Configurations

• FTPDirectory*: the source directory on the FTP server you’ll be retrieving files from

• FileType: the types of files you wish to retrieve (e.g. txt). You can also specify multiple files (e.g. txt,hl7) or all file types (e.g. *).

• MoveFTPProcessedFiles: set to true if you wish to move processed files (i.e. files that have already been downloaded to the local server) to a folder on the FTP server designated by FTPProcessedDirectory. If false, processed files will be deleted. This is set to true by default.

• FTPProcessedDirectory: the directory on the FTP server that processed files will be moved into. You will need to create this folder if you choose to use this workflow.

Local File Workflow Configurations

• LocalDirectory*: the local directory that the files will be downloaded to from the FTP server. Files in this directory will then be picked up for processing.

• MoveProcessedFiles: set to true if you wish to move processed files to a local folder designated by ProcessedDirectory. If false, processed files will be deleted. This is set to true by default.

• ProcessedDirectory: the local directory that processed files will be moved into. You will need to create this folder if you choose to use this workflow.

• MinimumFileAge*: the time to wait in seconds after last modified date before processing. By default, this is 0 seconds.

• IgnoreSegments*: set to true to remove specified segments when processing file. By default, this is false.

  • Default segments: FHS, BHS, FTS, BTS.

• InputFileEncoding*: encoding of input files. If left blank, it will be updated to the default encoding.

  • Default: Western (Windows-1252) for Windows machines, and Western (ISO-8859-1) for Linux/Mac OS X machines.

Once the component has been started, it will download files that match the provided parameters to the specified local directory. It will then process the downloaded files and push their contents to the component’s queue for further processing. Open the component’s logs to see the queued files and verify that the contents are being read as expected.

By default, the polling frequency is set to poll every 60 seconds. If files are dropped onto the server infrequently, this can be increased accordingly.

The frequency can be changed in the main function:

By default, the FTP/FTPS/SFTP connection is authenticated using username and password authentication and uses the default configurations. In some cases, additional configurations may be desired, such as:

• Specifying a FTP(S) mode

• Using public and private key authentication

• Disabling verify_peer or verify_host

• Increasing the timeout

• and more. Full details can be found by accessing the net.ftp.init, net.ftps.init, or net.sftp.init function help in the Translator

These configurations can be customized by modifying the Input parameter table in the loadConfigs() function in FTP/FTPprocess.lua:

Currently, the component retrieves files from the FTP server based on two conditions:

1. The file is retrievable

2. The file extension matches the provided extension (e.g. txt)

This is typically sufficient for most cases, but if additional conditions are needed, they can be added to the FTPmatchRules function in FTP/FTPmatchRules.lua:

• Ignored segments: the ignored segments list can be modified to remove additional segments from a message when IgnoredSegments = true

• Replace message delimiter: replaces the delimited at the end of the message with ‘\n’

  • Can be changed to any delimiter

  • Leave blank to leave original delimiter in place