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File Connector Quickstart

Quite often you might want to configure a connector to load files from a specific destination. This guide explains how to do this.

Step 1: Add connector-file dependency

The dependency to add to your pom.xml is:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.iconsolutions.ipf.core.connector</groupId>
    <artifactId>connector-file</artifactId>
</dependency>

If importing the Icon BOM, or using the Icon BOM as a parent, there’s no need to supply a separate version.

Step 2: Config

Connector configuration - in general - is heavily config-driven.The configuration allows us to specify:

  • Files directory

  • File loading interval

Here’s an example of a configuration block for a FileIngestionConfiguration.

tips { (1)
  process-participant.enabled = true
  file-ingestion-connector {
    file-ingestion {
      files-directory = "/static/files" (2)
      directory-id = "TIPS" (3)
      initial-delay = 5s (4)
      interval = 1h (5)
    }
  }
}
1 This is known as the config root path and will be referenced in the code. It indicates where in the application’s configuration to look for this File Connector Transport’s settings
2 Path of the directory with files
3 Id of the directory
4 Initial load delay
5 Loading interval

Step 3: Create File Connector Transport Configuration

The FileIngestionConfiguration class acts as a wrapper for the HOCON configuration which we defined in Step 2, the application accesses the configuration via this class.

Here’s how to create a FileIngestionConfiguration class for configuring a Local Directory Connector Transport:

var fileConfiguration = FileIngestionConfiguration.create("file-ingestion-connector", actorSystem.classicSystem().settings().config());
fileConfiguration.setFilesDirectory(tempDirectory.toString());
1 This retrieves the application configuration from the actor system. The actorSystem can typically be injected as a Spring bean.
2 This indicates the path to the config where the application should retrieve configuration values from.

Step 4: Create File Connector Transport

Here’s an example of how a LocalDirectoryConnectorTransport can be created:

var connectorTransport = LocalDirectoryConnectorTransport.builder()
                .withName("file-ingestion-transport") (1)
                .withActorSystem(actorSystem)
                .withFileIngestionConfiguration(fileConfiguration) (2)
                .build();
1 Give the ConnectorTransport a meaningful name
2 Provide a File Connector Transport Configuration (see Step 3 for an example)