File or directory

This field specifies the location and/or name of the input text file.

Note: Press the "add" button to add the file/directory/wildcard combination to the list of selected files (grid) below.

Regular expression

Specify the regular expression you want to use to select the files in the directory specified in the previous option. For example, you want to process all files that have a .txt extension. (See below "Selecting file using Regular Expressions")

Selected Files

This table contains a list of selected files (or wildcard selections) along with a property specifying if file is required or not. If a file is required and it isn't found, an error is generated. Otherwise, the filename is skipped.

Show filenames(s)...

Displays a list of all files that will be loaded based on the current selected file definitions.

Show file content

Displays the content of the selected file.

Show content from first data line

Displays the content from the first data line only for the selected file.

Accept filenames from previous steps

Enables the option to get filenames from previous steps.

Pass through fields from previous step

Enable this option to add all previous fields coming into the step to the step output. This behaves like a join option.

Step to read filenames from

Step from which to read the filenames

Field in the input to use as filename

Text File Input looks in this step to determine which filenames to use

File type

Can be either CSV or Fixed length. Based on this selection, Spoon will launch a different helper GUI when you press the "get fields" button in the last "fields" tab.

Separator

One or more characters that separate the fields in a single line of text. Typically this is ; or a tab. Special characters (e.g. CHAR ASCII HEX01) can be set with the format $[value], e.g. $[01] or $[6F,FF,00,1F].

Enclosure

Some fields can be enclosed by a pair of strings to allow separator characters in fields. The enclosure string is optional. If you use repeat an enclosures allow text line 'Not the nine o''clock news.'. With ' the enclosure string, this gets parsed as Not the nine o'clock news. Special characters (e.g. CHAR ASCII HEX01) can be set with the format $[value], e.g. $[01] or $[6F,FF,00,1F].

Allow breaks in enclosed fields?

Not implemented, yet. If you need this feature to get implemented, please file a JIRA feature request or
if are a subscription customer, please contact your Customer Support at Pentaho.
Also see PDI-338.

Escape

Specify an escape character (or characters) if you have these types of characters in your data. If you have \ as an escape character, the text 'Not the nine o\'clock news' (with ' the enclosure) gets parsed as Not the nine o'clock news. Special characters (e.g. CHAR HEX01) can be set with the format $[value], e.g. $[01] or $[6F,FF,00,1F].

Header & number of header lines

Enable if your text file has a header row (first lines in the file); you can specify the number of times the header lines appears.

Footer & number of footer lines

Enable if your text file has a footer row (last lines in the file); you can specify the number of times the footer row appears.

Wrapped lines and number of wraps

Use if you deal with data lines that have wrapped beyond a specific page limit; note that headers and footers are never considered wrapped

Paged layout and page size and doc header

Use these options as a last resort when dealing with texts meant for printing on a line printer; use the number of document header lines to skip introductory texts and the number of lines per page to position the data lines

Compression

Enable if your text file is placed in a Zip or GZip archive.Note: At the moment, only the first file in the archive is read.

No empty rows

Do not send empty rows to the next steps.

Include filename in output

Enable if you want the filename to be part of the output

Filename field name

Name of the field that contains the filename

Rownum in output?

Enable if you want the row number to be part of the output

Row number field name

Name of the field that contains the row number

Rownum by file?

Allows the row number to be reset per file

Format

Can be either DOS, UNIX or mixed. UNIX files have lines that are terminated by line feeds. DOS files have lines separated by carriage returns and line feeds. If you specify mixed, no verification is done.

Encoding

Specify the text file encoding to use; leave blank to use the default encoding on your system. To use Unicode, specify UTF-8 or UTF-16. On first use, Spoon searches your system for available encodings.

Limit

Sets the number of lines that is read from the file; 0 means read all lines.

Be lenient when parsing dates?

Disable if you want strict parsing of data fields; if case-lenient parsing is enabled, dates like Jan 32nd will become Feb 1st.

The date format Locale

This locale is used to parse dates that have been written in full such as "February 2nd, 2006;" parsing this date on a system running in the French (fr_FR) locale would not work because February is called Février in that locale.

Add filenames to result

Adds the filenames to the internal filename result set. This internal result set can be used later on, e.g. to process all read files.

Ignore errors?

Enable if you want to ignore errors during parsing

Skip error lines

Enable if you want to skip those lines that contain errors. You can generate an extra file that contains the line numbers on which the errors occurred. Lines with errors are not skipped, the fields that have parsing errors, will be empty (null)

Error count field name

Add a field to the output stream rows; this field contains the number of errors on the line

Error fields field name

Add a field to the output stream rows; this field contains the field names on which an error occurred

Error text field name

Add a field to the output stream rows; this field contains the descriptions of the parsing errors that have occurred

Warnings file directory

When warnings are generated, they are placed in this directory. The name of that file is <warning dir>/filename.<date_time>.<warning extension>

Error files directory

When errors occur related to non-existing or non-accessible files, they are placed in this directory. The name of the file is <errorfile_dir>/filename.<date_time>.<errorfile_extension>

Failing line numbers files directory

When a parsing error occurs on a line, the line number is placed in this directory. The name of that file is <errorline dir>/filename.<date_time>.<errorline extension>

Name

Name of the field

Type

Type of the field can be either String, Date or Number

Format

See Number Formats for a complete description of format symbols.

Position

This is needed when processing the 'Fixed' filetype. It is zero based, so the first character is starting with position 0.

Length

For Number: Total number of significant figures in a number; For String: total length of string; For Date: length of printed output of the string (e.g. 4 only gives back the year).

Precision

For Number: Number of floating point digits; For String, Date, Boolean: unused;

Currency

Used to interpret numbers like $10,000.00 or E5.000,00

Decimal

A decimal point can be a "." (10;000.00) or "," (5.000,00)

Grouping

A grouping can be a dot "," (10;000.00) or "." (5.000,00)

Null if

Treat this value as NULL

Default

Default value in case the field in the text file was not specified (empty)

Trim

type trim this field (left, right, both) before processing

Repeat

If the corresponding value in this row is empty, repeat the one from the last row when it was not empty.

0

Number

Yes

Digit

#

Number

Yes

Digit, zero shows as absent

.

Number

Yes

Decimal separator or monetary decimal separator

-

Number

Yes

Minus sign

,

Number

Yes

Grouping separator

E

Number

Yes

Separates mantissa and exponent in scientific notation; need not be quoted in prefix or suffix

;

Sub pattern boundary

Yes

Separates positive and negative sub patterns

%

Prefix or suffix

Yes

Multiply by 100 and show as percentage

\u2030

Prefix or suffix

Yes

Multiply by 1000 and show as per mille

€ (\u00A4)

Prefix or suffix

No

Currency sign, replaced by currency symbol. If doubled, replaced by international currency symbol. If present in a pattern, the monetary decimal separator is used instead of the decimal separator.

'

Prefix or suffix

No

Used to quote special characters in a prefix or suffix, for example, "'#'#" formats 123 to "#123". To create a single quote itself, use two in a row: "# o''clock".

Short filename field

The field name that contains the filename without path information but with an extension.

Extension field

The field name that contains the extension of the filename.

Path field

The field name that contains the path in operating system format.

Size field

The field name that contains the size of the field.

Is hidden field

The field name that contains if the file is hidden or not (boolean).

Uri field

The field name that contains the URI.

Root uri field

The field name that contains only the root part of the URI.

Show filenames

Displays a list of all the files selected. Note that if the transformation is to be run on a separate server, the result might be incorrect.

Show file content

Displays the first lines of the text-file. Make sure that the file-format is correct. When in doubt, try both DOS and UNIX formats.

Show content from first data line

Helps you position the data lines in complex text files with multiple header lines and more.

Get fields

Allows you to guess the layout of the file. In case of a CSV file, this is performed almost automatically. When you select a file with fixed length fields, you must specify the field boundaries using a wizard.

Preview rows

Preview the rows generated by this step.