AttributeFileWriter

Writes the contents of an attribute to a text or binary file.  

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Typical Uses

  • Writing files mid-workspace that contain the value of an attribute
  • Replacing a writer where the desired content is stored as an attribute
  • Writing images that have been stored as blob attributes
  • Writing coordinate system information to a file
  • Writing text lists of attribute values

How does it work?

The AttributeFileWriter receives any type of feature and writes the contents (value) of a specified attribute to an external file.

A Target Filename and encoding type must be specified. File names may be provided explicitly or by attribute value, expression, user parameter, or conditional value. If a target file already exists, it may be overwritten or appended to.

The attribute value and target file may be text or binary. A variety of encoding choices are available for text files. Binary files should be designated as Binary (fme-binary), as the transformer writes it as-is and will simply preserve the attribute contents as a Blob.

Examples

Usage Notes

  • When writing any binary file types, ensure that Target File Encoding is set to Binary (fme-binary).
  • Full path names can be created from existing attribute values by using the Text Editor to create an expression.
  • The most common text encodings are Windows Latin-1 (windows-1252) and Unicode 8-bit (utf-8).
  • If you are unsure of the encoding used by the attribute, the Feature Information window in the FME Data Inspector will often help (see image in previous example)

Configuration

Input Ports

Output Ports

Parameters

Editing Transformer Parameters

Using a set of menu options, transformer parameters can be assigned by referencing other elements in the workspace. More advanced functions, such as an advanced editor and an arithmetic editor, are also available in some transformers. To access a menu of these options, click beside the applicable parameter. For more information, see Transformer Parameter Menu Options.

Defining Values

There are several ways to define a value for use in a Transformer. The simplest is to simply type in a value or string, which can include functions of various types such as attribute references, math and string functions, and workspace parameters. There are a number of tools and shortcuts that can assist in constructing values, generally available from the drop-down context menu adjacent to the value field.

Dialog Options - Tables

Transformers with table-style parameters have additional tools for populating and manipulating values.

Reference

Processing Behavior

Feature-Based

Feature Holding

No

Dependencies None
FME Licensing Level FME Base Edition and above
Aliases  
History  

FME Community

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Examples may contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver and/or the Open Government Licence – Canada.