FTP Put File activity

During run time, the FTP Put File activity takes data from variables of the orchestration, places the data into a file, and connects to an FTP Server and places the file in the specified directory location.

For an example of using the FTP Put File activity, see the Getting Started Guide.

Transfer interruption

The file transfer done by the FTP Put File activity during run time is non-transactional and therefore is not guaranteed. For example, if an FTP Put File activity transfers a file from the Integration Appliance to an FTP server and the transfer of the file is interrupted because the Integration Appliance is rebooted, it is not guaranteed that the entire file is transferred.

Symbolic link

The FTP Put File activity supports symbolic links to directories if the symbolic links to directories are supported by the operating system that hosts the FTP Server and the symbolic links to directories are supported by the FTP Server itself. To determine the specific symbolic link support for a specific FTP Server on a specific operating system, see your operating system and FTP Server documentation.

Adding an FTP Put File activity to the orchestration

  1. Create or open an orchestration. A graphical representation of the orchestration is displayed.
  2. Select the Activities tab and expand the FTP folder.
  3. Drag the Put File activity onto the orchestration.
  4. Select the activity. The Checklist is displayed.

Creating, selecting, or editing an FTP endpoint

  1. Click Pick Endpoint task from the Checklist and choose one of the following actions:
    • Select an existing endpoint:
      1. Select Browse. The Project Explorer is displayed.
        Attention: Specifying a new FTP Endpoint with a different directory structure than the original FTP Endpoint can cause the orchestration job to fail during run time. You must either specify a new FTP Server that matches the directory structure of the originally specified FTP Server or change the configured directory of the In Directory field by clicking Browse as described in the To configure the activity procedure.
      2. Select an existing endpoint and click OK. Skip to the "Configure the activity" procedure.
    • Select an existing endpoint and edit the endpoint:
      1. Select Browse. The Project Explorer is displayed.
      2. Select an existing endpoint and click OK.
        Attention: Specifying a new FTP Endpoint with a different directory structure than the original FTP Endpoint can cause the orchestration job to fail during run time. You must either specify a new FTP Server that matches the directory structure of the originally specified FTP Server or change the configured directory of the In Directory field by clicking Browse as described in the "Configure the activity" procedure.
      3. Click Edit. The Edit Endpoint pane is displayed.
    • Create a new endpoint: Select New. The Create Endpoint pane is displayed.
  2. Create or edit an FTP endpoint: Creating or Editing an FTP endpoint

Specifying the delivery rules

  1. Select the Delivery Rules task from the Checklist. The Delivery Rules pane is displayed. If security is not enabled for the FTP endpoint, the Transfer as Text (ASCII) and Transfer as Binary (BINARY) options are enabled. If security is enabled for the FTP endpoint, the file transfer type is always binary.
  2. Select the type of file transfer between the Integration Appliance and the FTP Server from one of the following options:
    • Transfer as Text (ASCII) - This option is used for transferring files such as HTML, XML, and other text files. Line endings are converted as required and other text file conventions are followed.
      CAUTION:
      Using this option with binary files can result in a loss of data.
    • Transfer as Binary (BINARY) - This option is used for transferring binary files. Using this option the Integration Appliance transfers data with no conversions.
    Note: App Connect FTP connector SFTP endpoint supports only client side SFTP protocol version 3. Hence, the SFTP protocol does not support ASCII/text mode file transfer. Make sure to set the File Transfer Type to Transfer as Binary (BINARY) in the Checklist > Delivery Rules.

Configuring the activity

  1. Select the Configure task from the Checklist. The Configure pane is displayed.
  2. Configure the fields in this pane as described in the following table:
    Table 1.
    Field Description
    Save
    File Named This field is not used for this activity. You specify the name of the output file using the filename input parameter of the Map Input task.
    In Directory Specifies the directory on the FTP server where the Integration Appliance places the file generated in this activity. You can specify a directory using one of the following options:
    • Directly enter directory path by clicking in the field and typing in one of the following directory paths:
      • Relative directory path, for example: /output.  (Assumes that FTP home has been configured for the user account that connects to the FTP Server. See "Note" for more information.)
      • Complete directory path, for example on a UNIX machine: /home/user/output.
    • Click Browse... to populate the drown-down list of available directories. Select the appropriate directory from the drop-down list.
    Note: UNIX: If you specify a relative directory path when connecting to an FTP Server on a UNIX machine, verify that the FTP home directory has been correctly specified in the /etc/password file for the user account connecting to the FTP Server.
    Of Type Specifies how to read in the contents of the file - either as binary data or encoded text. If the Text option is selected, set the encoding type using one of the following options:
    • From the encoded with drop-down list, select one of the default encoding types.  
    • Enter your encoding type directly by clicking in the encoded with field and typing in your encoding type.
    Note: Some double-byte characters are not converted using the SHIFT-JIS encoding. For more information, see Using the Shift-JIS encoding.
     
    Attention: You must specify the Transfer as Text (ASCII) option for FTP activities when retrieving text files and placing text files on an FTP Server for Endpoints that manipulate text data while transferring data from/to the FTP Endpoint in ASCII mode. For example, mainframe and DOS FTP Endpoints manipulate ASCII data when passing data in ASCII mode.
    For example, if your orchestration retrieves ASCII files using the FTP Poll Directory activity and places ASCII files using the FTP Put File activity to a mainframe FTP Server, you must specify the options in the following tasks in Studio:
    • In the Configure task of an FTP Poll Directory activity, for the Of Type field select the Text option.
    • In the Delivery Rules task of an FTP Poll Directory activity, for the File Transfer Type field select the Transfer as Text (ASCII) option.
    • In the Configure task of an FTP Put File activity, for the Of Type field select the Text option.
    • In the Delivery Rules task of an FTP Put File activity, for the File Transfer Type field select the Transfer as Text (ASCII) option.
    Options - Select one of the following options to define the behavior when a file of the same name already exists in the specified output directory:
    Overwrite Existing File if Duplicate File Name is Found Specifies if the file already exists, destroys the contents of the original file with new data returned from the activity.
    Append to Existing File Specifies if the file already exists, keeps the original data in the file and appends the new data (returned from the activity) to the end of the file.
    Raise Error if File with Duplicate Name is Found Specifies if the file already exists, keeps the original data in the file, throws an error, and does nothing with the new data returned from the activity.
    Note: When you select this option, the FTP Put File activity checks if the file exists on the server before uploading the file. In some FTP servers you may not have the permission to check if the file exists before uploading it. This is also referred to as Blind FTP. In such cases, the file is overwritten, even if you have selected the Raise Error if File with Duplicate Name is Found option.

Specifying the retry options

  1. Select the Retry task from the Checklist. The Retry pane is displayed.
  2. Configure the retry options for connecting to an FTP Server. The following table describes the retry options for connecting to an FTP Server:
    Table 2.
    Field Description
    Retry
    1) Wait ___ second(s) between each retry. The number of seconds that the Integration Appliance waits before trying to establish a connection to the FTP Server.
    2) Try to connect ___ times before failing. Specifies the retry count - the maximum number of times the Integration Appliance attempts to establish a connection to the FTP Server before issuing an error and stopping the processing of the current orchestration job.

    If you deploy an orchestration that contains an FTP Put File activity and the Integration Appliance cannot connect to the specified FTP Server, the Integration Appliance logs the connections errors as warnings in the system and orchestration logs until the retry count value is reached. When the retry count is reached, the Integration Appliance logs an error in the system and orchestration logs and the stops processing the current orchestration job.

    For example, you set the retry count to 3. The first, second, and third connection errors are shown in the system log as warnings. The Integration Appliance logs the fourth connection error as an error and stops processing the current orchestration job.

Mapping the input of the activity

  1. Select the Map Inputs task in the Checklist. The Retry pane is displayed. The input parameters of the activity are displayed in the To Activity pane.
  2. You are not required to map all the input parameters of the activity. The following parameters are the required:  
    • filename
    • data
All other parameters are optional. See Creating a map for general instructions on mapping.  

If the input parameter listed in the following table are not displayed in the To Activity pane of the Map Inputs pane, select Map > Show Optional Parameters from the toolbar menu or right-click in the To Activity pane and select the Show Optional Parameters option. If the Map > Show Optional Parameters option is not selectable in the toolbar menu, click on a node in the Map Inputs pane to make this option active.

You can optionally override the settings you specified in the Configure and Pick Endpoint task of the Checklist dynamically during run time, using the input parameters defined in the following table.

For example, the directory on the FTP Server where the Integration Appliance places the file generated in this activity, could be set in the Configure task to the directory called output. During run time, the directory name: outputXML could be passed into the activity using the directory input parameter. The directory name specified dynamically during run time overrides the original setting specified in the Configure pane. In this example, the file would be placed in the outputXML directory.

Table 3.
Input Parameter Name/Node Description Overrides the Setting in Task?
directory Specifies the directory on the FTP server where the Integration Appliance places the file generated in this activity. The directory input parameter overrides the In Directory field of the Configure task.
encoding Specifies how the outgoing data is written out to the file:
  • If no encoding is required, specify the string: binary .
  • If encoding is required, specify the encoding type that should be used to encode the outgoing data, for example: UTF-8, US-ASCII, ISO_8859-1, EBCDIC-US, or SHIFT-JIS.
The encoding input parameter overrides the encoding specified in  the Of Type field of the Configure task but if the Binary option is selected in the Of Type field of the Configure task, the encoding specified by the encoding input parameter is ignored.
overwrite Specifies the behavior when a existing file of the same name already exists in the specified output directory. Specify one of the following values:
  • y - Specifies if the file already exists, destroy the contents of the original file with new data returned from the activity.
  • a - Specifies if the file already exists, keep the original data in the file and append the new data (returned from the activity) to the end of the file.
  • n - Specifies if the file already exists, keep the original data in the file and do nothing with the new data returned from the activity.
The overwrite input parameter overrides the Options field of the Configure task.
connection/timeout Specifies the connection timeout - the amount of time in seconds before a timeout occurs between the Integration Appliance attempting to establish a connection to the endpoint and the time it takes for the endpoint to respond to the connection request. For the FTP Put File activity, the amount of time the Integration Appliance attempts to establish a connection to the FTP Server before timing out.   The timeout node of the connection input parameter overrides the Connection Timeout -Time out after ___ second(s) when establishing a connection to the Endpoint field of the FTP endpoint.  
connection/host Specifies the Host Name or IP address for the FTP server. The host node of the connection input parameter overrides the Host Name field of the FTP endpoint.
connection/port Specifies the port number for the specified host name. The standard port for FTP traffic is 21. The default port for SFTP traffic is 22. The port node of the connection input parameter overrides the Port field of the FTP endpoint.
connection/username Specify a user name for the account used to connect to the FTP Server. The username node of the connection input parameter overrides the User Name field of the FTP endpoint.
connection/password Specify a password for the account used to connect to the FTP Server. The password node of the connection input parameter overrides the Password field of the FTP endpoint.



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Timestamp icon Last updated: Tuesday, 27 September 2016


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