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of, or unwanted characters at the beginning of your file, for example; you can also set a line
width if you are still working with old line printer data; etc.
It is important that pages be defined properly. This can be done either by using a set number of
lines or using a string of text (for example, the character “P”), to detect on the page. Be aware
that this is not a Boundary setting; it detects each new page, not each new record.
For an explanation of all the options, see: "Text file Input Data settings" on page319.
Settings for an XML file
XML is a special file format because these file types can have a theoretically unlimited number
of structure types. The input data has three options that basically determine at which node level
a new record is created. You can:
l Select an element type to create a new delimiter every time that element is encountered.
l Enter an XPath to create a delimiter based on the node name of elements. The Show all
elements option allows you to extract information from all elements, even when the
delimiter is set to a specific lower-level element.
l Use the root node. If there is only one top-level element, there will only be one record
before the Boundaries are set.
See also: "XML File Input Data settings" on page321.
Note
The DataMapper only extracts elements for which at least one value is defined in the file.
Record boundaries
Boundaries are the division between records: they define where one record ends and the next
record begins. Using boundaries, you can organize the data the way you want.
You could use the exact same data source with different boundaries in order to extract different
information. If, for instance, a PDF file contains multiple invoices, each invoice could be a
record, or all invoices for one customer could go into a single record.
Keep in mind that when the data is merged with a template, each record generates output
(print, email, web page) for a single recipient.
To set a boundary, a specific trigger must be defined.
The trigger can be a natural delimiter between blocks of data, such as a row in a CSV file or a
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