Configuring the CDInput node

When you add the CDInput node to a message flow, you can configure it.

1. Optional: On the Description tab, enter a Short description, a Long description, or both.
   You can also rename the node on this tab.
2. On the Basic tab, set the properties that determine how the TCP/IP connection is controlled.
   1. In Directory filter, specify the directory from which to process input files.
      If this property is left blank, the node can process files from all directories. If multiple CDInput nodes are deployed to the same integration server, files are distributed randomly between the nodes unless filtering is defined.

      The directory must exist.

      If the IBM® App Connect Enterprise and IBM Sterling Connect:Direct® server are on different machines, this is the path to the directory on the IBM App Connect Enterprise machine.

      If the Integration node path to input directory property in the Connect:Direct Server policy is set, the directory filter can be a path relative to that value; otherwise it must be an absolute path.

   2. In File name filter, specify a pattern for the file name. It is either a file name or a character sequence (a pattern) that matches a file name. A pattern is a sequence that contains least one of the following wildcard characters:

      Wildcard character	Description	Example
      *	Any sequence of zero or more characters	*.xml matches all file names with an xml extension
      ?	Any single character	f??????.csv matches all file names that consist of the letter f followed by 6 characters and then the sequence .csv.

   3. In the Connect:Direct Server policy, specify the name of the policy that is being used to connect to the Connect:Direct server, in order to collect transfer information.

      If this value is not set, the default policy (named "Default") is used.

      The default policy connects to a Connect:Direct server located on the same machine as IBM App Connect Enterprise, and using default port configurations.

      The default policy also uses the "default" security identity, which must be created using the mqsisetdbparms command; for example: mqsisetdbparms -w c:\workdir\ACEServ1 -n cd::default -u mqbroker -p xxxxxxx

   4. Select Action on successful processing to specify the action that the CDInput node takes after successfully processing the file. The action can be to move the file to the archive subdirectory, to augment the file name with a time stamp and move the source file to the archive subdirectory, or to delete the file.
      • If you select Delete, the file is deleted after successful processing.
      • If you select Add Timestamp, the current date and time are added to the file name.
3. On the Input Message Parsing tab, set values for the properties that the node uses to determine how to parse the incoming message.
   If the incoming message has an MQRFH2 header, you are not required to set values for the Input Message Parsing properties because the values are derived from the <mcd> folder in the MQRFH2 header; for example:

   <mcd><Msd>MRM</Msd><Set>DHM4UO906S001</Set><Type>receiptmsg1</Type>
   <Fmt>XML</Fmt></mcd>

   If you set values, and if they differ from the values in the MQRFH2 header, the values in the MQRFH2 header take precedence.

   1. In Message domain, select the name of the parser that you are using from the list. The default is BLOB.
      You can choose from the following options:

      • DFDL
      • XMLNSC
      • DataObject
      • JSON
      • BLOB
      • MIME
      • MRM
      • JMSMap
      • JMSStream
      • XMLNS

      You can also specify a user-defined parser, if appropriate.
   2. If you are using the DFDL parser, the MRM parser or the XMLNSC parser in validating mode, specify the relevant Message model.
      For XMLNSC, if your schema files are in an application or static library, leave this property blank. If your messages are modeled in a referenced shared library or message set, select the top-level shared library for the shared library or message set that contains the schema files.
   3. If you are using the DFDL or MRM parsers, select the correct message from the list in Message.
      This list is populated with messages that are defined in the Message model that you selected.
   4. If you are using the MRM parser, select the format of the message from the list in Physical format.
      This list includes all the physical formats that you defined for this Message model.
   5. Specify the message coded character set ID in Message coded character set ID.
   6. Select the message encoding from the list in Message encoding or specify a numeric encoding value.
      For more information about encoding, see Data conversion.
4. On the Parser Options tab:
   1. The Parse timing option is, by default, set to On Demand, which causes parsing of the message to be delayed.
      To cause the message to be parsed immediately, see Parsing on demand.
   2. If you are using the XMLNSC parser, set values for the properties that determine how the XMLNSC parser operates.
      For more information, see Manipulating messages in the XMLNSC domain.
5. Use the Retry tab to define how retry processing is performed when a flow fails. You can set the following properties.
   1. Retry mechanism determines the action that occurs if the flow fails. Choose from the following values.
      • Select Failure for the node to report a failure without any retry attempts.
      • Select Short retry for the node to retry before it reports a failure if the condition persists. The number of times that it retries is specified in Retry threshold.
      • Select Short retry and long retry for the node to retry, first with the value in Retry threshold as the number of attempts it makes. If the condition persists after the Retry threshold is reached, the node then uses the Long retry interval between attempts.
   2. Specify the Retry threshold: The number of times the node retries the flow transaction if the Retry mechanism property is set to either Short retry or Short retry and long retry.
   3. Specify the Short retry interval: The length of time, in seconds, to wait between short retry attempts.
   4. Specify the Long retry interval: The length of time to wait between long retry attempts until a message is successful, the message flow is stopped, or the message flow is redeployed.
6. Use the Records and Elements tab to specify how the data is interpreted as records. Only one record is retrieved each time the CDInput node is started; therefore, if the TCP/IP stream contains multiple logical messages, you must start the node multiple times to receive all the messages.
   1. Use the Record detection property to determine how the data is split into records, each of which generates a single message. Choose from the following options:
      • The Connection closed property specifies that all of the data that is sent during a connection is a single record.
      • The Fixed Length property specifies that each record is a fixed number of bytes in length. Each record contains the number of bytes specified in the Length property.
      • Select Delimited if the records that you are processing are separated, or terminated, by a DOS or UNIX line end or by a sequence of user-defined delimiter bytes. Specify the delimiter and delimiter type in the Delimiter and Delimiter type properties.
      • Select Parsed Record Sequence if the file contains a sequence of one or more records that are serially recognized by the parser that is specified in Message domain. The node propagates each recognized record as a separate message. If you select the Record detection option, the parser that is specified in Message domain must be DFDL, XMLNSC, or MRM.
   2. If you set Record detection to Fixed Length, use Length to specify the length of the output record.
      This value must be between 1 byte and 100 MB. The default is 80 bytes.
   3. If you set Record detection to Connection closed, Fixed Length, or Delimited, a limit of 100 MB applies to the length of the records. If you set Record detection to Parsed Record Sequence, the CDInput node does not determine or limit the length of a record. Nodes that are downstream in the message flow might try to determine the record length or process a long record. You can apply message flow techniques that are described in the Large Messaging sample to make the best use of the available memory.
   4. If you set Record detection to Delimited, use Delimiter to specify the delimiter to be used. Choose from the following options:
      • DOS or UNIX Line End, on UNIX systems, specifies the line feed character (<LF>, X'0A'), and, on Windows systems, specifies a carriage return character followed by a line feed character (<CR><LF>, X'0D0A'). The node treats both of these strings as delimiters, irrespective of the system on which IBM App Connect Enterprise is running. If both strings can be seen in the same record, the node recognizes both as delimiters. The node does not recognize X'15' which, on z/OS® systems, is the 'newline' byte; if your input file is coded with EBCDIC new lines, set this property to Custom Delimiter and set Custom delimiter to 15.
      • If you select Custom Delimiter, you can specify a sequence of bytes in Custom delimiter
   5. In Custom delimiter, specify the delimiter byte or bytes to be used when Delimiter is set to Custom delimiter.
      Specify this value as an even-numbered string of hexadecimal digits. The default is X'0A' and the maximum length of the string is 16 bytes (represented by 32 hexadecimal digits).
   6. If you set Record detection to Delimited, use Delimiter type to specify the type of delimiter. You can select from the following options.
      • Infix. If you select this value, each delimiter separates a record. If the data ends with a delimiter, the (zero length) data that follows the final delimiter is still propagated, although it contains no data.
      • Postfix. If you specify this value, each delimiter terminates records. If the data ends with a delimiter, no empty record is propagated after the delimiter. If the data does not end with a delimiter, it is processed as if a delimiter follows the final bytes of the data. The default value is Postfix.
      The CDInput node considers each occurrence of the delimiter in the input as either separating (infix) or terminating (postfix) each record. If the data begins with a delimiter, the node treats the (zero length) content that precedes that delimiter as a record and propagates an empty record to the flow. The delimiter is never included in the propagated message.
7. Use the Validation tab to provide validation that is based on the message set for predefined messages.
   For more information about validation, see Validating messages. For information about how to complete this tab, see Validation tab properties.
8. On the Transactions tab, set the transaction mode.
   Although TCPIP operations are non-transactional, the transaction mode on this input node determines whether the rest of the nodes in the flow are to be run under point of consistency or not. Select Yes if you want the flow updates to be treated transactionally (if possible) or No if you do not.
   The default for this property is No.
9. Optional: On the Instances tab, set values for the properties that determine the additional instances (threads) that are available for a node. For more information, see Configurable properties in a BAR file.