attribute, user

Attributes describe the properties of something.

In FME, features have one or more attributes, consisting of an attribute name and associated value. A park dataset containing multiple parks might have these attributes:

  • Name

  • Neighborhood

  • DogPark

Each individual park has values assigned to these attributes, for example:

  • Name Heights Park

  • Neighborhood West End

  • DogPark Yes

Features may also have additional attributes that are not shown by default (but can be exposed), including format-specific attributes (such as autocad_block_name) and internal FME attributes that have various uses (such as fme_color).

In FME Form, reader and writer feature types and transformer ports show the user attributes and exposed format and FME attributes on the canvas when expanded.

 

Reader and writer feature types also show user attributes in the feature type properties dialog, if supported, allowing inspection of names and types for the corresponding features.

FME supports attributes at the geometry level as well as the feature level, where they are called traits.