Append IFTSTA messages into same interchange.

Hayo

October 03, 2018 17:31
4 comments

We are working for a while with ediFabric and are pleased with it, however now we are running into an issue. We have gotten the request to write multiple IFTSTA messages in 1 file with 1 interchange (UNB, UNH).
Is there a way to do this, I was working with reading and writing, but somehow couldn't figure it out.
How to combine the reading with the writing to the same file. In general, the setup will be writing a message every second so I have to consider locking of the file.

Comments

4 comments

Admin

October 04, 2018 12:49

Hello Hayo,

You can write any number of messages to a stream. If you know how to do it with one then you know how to do it with more, just write each message to the stream. In the SDK (download from here), you can find multiple examples on writing EDI messages.

This one in particular, WriteMultipleInvoices() example, shows how to write two transactions.

using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
    using (var writer = new EdifactWriter(stream))
    {
        writer.Write(SegmentBuilders.BuildUnb("1"));

        // 1. Write the first invoice
        writer.Write(EdifactTransactionBuilders.BuildInvoice("1"));

        // 2. Write the second invoice
        writer.Write(EdifactTransactionBuilders.BuildInvoice("2"));

        // 3. Write any subsequent invoices...
    }
}

Hayo
- October 04, 2018 14:02
Hello,

Thank you, in this situation, you write all of them at the same time to a file.
What i am looking at is, that at 8am, we start the file with interchange and 1 message
at 8:05am we append a message to the file.
At 8:10am we append a message and close the interchange

Now based on this i could read the file, empty it and rewrite it. But is there another way? that just adds a message to an existing interchange in a file

0
Admin
- Edited October 04, 2018 15:48
If you need to write messages to the same file at different times, then you can't use the writer as it automatically closes the headers.

So you'll have to build UNB segment yourself as a string (we can add this feature in the next version) and do:

1. Create UNB as string and write it to a file, let's say C:\myfile.txt
```
string unb = // create it

File.CreateAllText("C:\myfile.txt", unb);
```
2. After some time, create an instance of TSIFTSTA
```
TSIFTSTA iftsta_1 = // create the object
```
3. Turn it to a string, set separators, postfixes, etc, if you need to in EdifactWriterSettings
```
string edi_1 = iftsta_1.ToEdi(new EdifactWriterSettings());
```
4. Append the string to the file
```
File.AppendAllText("C:\myfile.txt", edi_1);
```
5. After some time create another iftsta and append it to the file:
```
TSIFTSTA iftsta_2 = // create it

string edi_2 = iftsta_2.ToEdi(new EdifactWriterSettings());

File.AppendAllText("C:\myfile.txt", edi_2);
```
6. Append as many IFTSTA as you need...

7. Manually create a UNZ as a string and write it to the end of the file (either maintain a counter or count the UNH occurrences in the file):
```
string unz = // create it

File.AppendAllText("C:\myfile.txt", unz);
```
0
Hayo
- October 12, 2018 11:46
Thank you, i got it working.

0

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