eiConsole v.24R1
Tutorial & Working Directory

eiConsole Tutorial – Topology

Creating a Simple Route

Note: The Quick Start and Foundation tutorials should be completed before proceeding with the Topology Tutorials.

Overview

This brief tutorial will cover creating a simple Route in PilotFish’s eiConsole IDE. This Route will be configured using a Listener and Transport pair called the Directory Listener and Directory Transport. Testing or running the Route will pick up files in one Source directory and deliver them to a Target directory with a different name.

Before You Begin

Simple Route
Working Directory

Download the Simple-Route-Working-Directory.zip file with the sample Working Directory and unzip it on your computer to a convenient place. In our case, it’s c:\Users\{USER _NAME}\PilotFish eiConsole Working Directories\Simple Route where {USER_NAME} is the user’s name.

Open the eiConsole, browse to your Simple Route directory and open it. The fully configured Route (Creating a Simple Route – Sample) is also included in the working directory. It matches the Route you are creating in this tutorial. Your Route File Management screen will open, as shown below.

Follow the tutorial and walk through it step-by-step. Finally, you may check your work using the Testing Mode of the eiConsole.

Open Your eiConsole

To begin, open your eiConsole. This will display the Route File Management dialog, as above.

You will see a selected directory at the top of the dialog, known as the Working Directory. Click the Browse button to change this directory from the currently selected or default directory. The images in this tutorial assume you have created and navigated to a new Working Directory or one that is empty. To create a new Route, click the Add Route button – see the red arrow below.

Provide a Name for the New Route

This will raise a dialog where you will be asked to provide a name for the new Route. For this exercise, name it Creating a Simple Route.

Press OK, and you should see the new Route listed in the Routes table. To open the Route, select it from the list and either double-click or right-click and select Edit Route from the drop-down.

Opening the Route for editing will open the main eiConsole screen, shown below:

Define the Listener

We’ll now define the Listener, which dictates how information (messages) get into the Route. Select the Listener stage in the second column.

You will notice the bottom half of the screen now has a Listener Configuration tab, which should be selected automatically. Now we need to pick a Listener from the Listener Type drop-down. Select Directory/File.

Once selected, the bottom panel should change to resemble the following:

Define a Name for the Listener

We can now define a name for the Listener in the Listener Name field. Once defined, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of naming modules (Listeners, Processors, Transports, etc.). We’ll call ours Simple Route Inbound.

Configuring the Listener

Next, we’ll need to configure our Listener. Most modules require some configuration. Items that are required (such as the Polling Directory item for this Listener type) have a red dot next to them if they’re not yet configured. For our Listener, we’ll need to specify a directory on the file system to check for new files and how often we’ll poll that directory. Enter 5 for the Polling Interval value.

Configuring the Polling Directory

We’ll now configure the Polling Directory. You may type the path manually or use the “…” button to browse to it. Because this is an exercise, we recommend using the already created folder in our Working Directory. The absolute path is c:\Users\{USER _NAME}\PilotFish eiConsole Working Directories\Simple Route\in. Also, we can use the relative path, which is ..\..\in.

Note that the directory you specify must exist.

Configure Post-Process Operation

We’ll specify the system’s behavior after a file has been picked up. You can Keep, Delete or Move the file. If you choose to Move a file, the Target directory becomes required (..\..\processed in our case). This allows you to specify the directory to use for the processed files.

Configuring the Target

We’ve now configured our Listener. Next, we’ll need to configure a Target to deliver the messages created by this Listener to some destination. Select the Transport (the sixth) stage:

Like the Listener, you’ll want to select a Transport from the Transport Type drop-down. We’ll use Directory / File here:

Once again, we should name the Transport once defined. For this exercise, we’ll call ours Simple Route Outbound.

As you can see, there are a couple of required items for the Directory Transport. Target Directory is the directory we’ll be creating a new file in, Target File Name is the name (minus the extension) of the file to create, and Target File Extension is the extension of that file. For our example, we’ll populate these as ..\..\out, output, and txt:

This Transport is now configured to deliver messages to ..\..\out as output.txt. If such a file exists already, it will automatically append a numeric suffix (1, 2, etc.) to the end of the file name.

Testing the Route

Our Route is now configured and complete. We’ll now want to test it. To do this, go to the Mode menu (the menu bar at the top of the screen) and select Testing Mode.

Once in Testing Mode, we can start, stop, skip, or trace at or after any stage. By default, the Testing Mode will have the first Listener selected. Copy the sample.txt file from the c:\Users\{USER _NAME}\PilotFish eiConsole Working Directories\Simple Route\data directory to your input directory (..\..\in in our example) and click Execute Test.

Each stage’s question mark icon should be replaced with a green checkmark as each stage completes.

You may now click on the Stop button and check your output folder (“..\..\out“); you should see the output.txt file there.

You’ve now successfully completed creating a simple route.