Type Designer - propagating properties of types

[mlapse]

I have a trading partner who wants to send me EDI data. The catch (there always seems to be one) is that they want to send the data without any delimiters, only segment terminators which are <NL>'s.

The data for each field is to be padded with spaces to the max length (in case the data isnt that big).

The looping etc. of the file is just like EDI.

The issue is how do I change the properties of all the groups and items within those groups to be a fixed size and padded to the max length. I cant seem to do this in the type designer.

 

[janhes]

You would have to change each ITEM in Type Designer. Set Pad to Yes and Padded To to Fixed Size

 

[mlapse]

i meant is there any way to change them all together? there are over 200 items in the type tree.

 

[janhes]

Can you export the type tree, edit the xml and reimport it?

 

[BocaBurger]

What EDI standard are they using? Unless they are the 700 lb. gorilla, you should be able to make them stick to someones EDI standard.

The whole idea of EDI is to keep the data standardized.



BocaBurger
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The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[eyetry]

BocaBurger, could be that they aren't a 700 lb gorilla but they have 700 lb friends

Did something similar here. reimported tree in a fashion that caused fixed length as default. Ended up being slightly less work in the end because I still need to confirm various aspects of the tree still applied and add rules that weren't imported.

janhess, would that be exporting to an mts file and editing that? looks like it might be about as much work doesn't it?
You'd have to add something like the following:

<PadText Justify="LEFT" ApplyPad="ANYCONTEXT"><PadValue>&lt;SP&gt;</PadValue>
<PaddedToFixedSize Length="1"/>

but changing the pad value and length for each element. Not an XML guy though so maybe I'm missing something.

 

[janhes]

I'd probably use a bit of xsl to change the Items in the mts file but otherwise if there are lots of different item lengths it may take as long to do manually.