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feature reader: Feature Types to Read: ambiguity

  • November 12, 2020
  • 4 replies
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gisbradokla
Enthusiast
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There is both a support ticket and an idea. When reading a large list of drawings from an excel list. you "must" know the entire list of layers you want to read. in the "Features Types to Read:" selection box. featurestoreadSeveral things are what i consider ambiguous.

  1. if you use the cached data selection and select layers from 1 data source (1 drawing only can be selected) and select a layer with a space in it and a layer with no space in it. it returns a text list of the layers with no quotations. however the layer with a spcae will not select any features.
  2. If you use the text editor and type your own list of layers and use quotations and commas (like I would do in an esri product) all of the layers with no spaces (and quotations around them) are skipped.
  3. If you read the list in a text editor and are trying to identify layers with spaces that need quotations, you are unable to determine which layers have spaces and which layers are simply the next layer in the list.
  4. If you desire to capture all objects from all layers you apparently will have to include every single layer in this list. I have tried * to read all layers. but got an error.

I am unwilling to put my layer list here but and set of drawings with more than 2 layers and at least one layer with a space it is easy to see what the problem is.

Please go to the idea and upvote so dev will make a change to how this works.

 

@gisbradokla

4 replies

jovitaatsafe
Safer
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Hi @gisbradokla2​,

I have just sent out a response to your case, my apologies for the delay. The Feature Types to Read is more applicable when you are reading in a single file because FME can grab them from one file and let you choose using the 'Select Feature Types to Read' dialog. The Feature Types to Read field expects values to be a space-delimited list of WWJD encoded parts according to this article, WWJD being a Safe Software-specific encoding. For these reasons, I don't think it's intended for a user to concatenate their own Feature Types to Read.

 

When reading from multiple files, we need a more generic approach, and with the generic approach FME can't know what feature types will be available before runtime since it's reading multiple files now. To summarize my email response a bit, I believe you will want to leave 'Feature Types to Read' blank, which will read all Feature Types by default, output as a Single Output Port, and your data should come out of the Generic port. If you have set some attributes to expose such as fme_feature_type and autocad_source_filename, you will be able to then filter out what feature types you wish to work with using Testers or TestFilters for example.

 

Hope that clears things up, and I definitely welcome any other input from the Community, as I'm not sure I've explained the FeatureReader the best.

gisbradokla
Enthusiast
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  • gisbradoklaEnthusiast
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  • November 13, 2020

@jovitaatsafe​  When I remove the space delimited layer list from Feature Types to Read. it does say (in gray) <All Features Types>. I have always had Single Output Port as my output ports radio selection.

I say ok and the transformer turns red. Also If the feature types is a space delimited list. Why isn't the tester a space delimited list?

@gisbradokla
gisbradokla
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  • gisbradoklaEnthusiast
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  • November 13, 2020
gisbradokla wrote:

@jovitaatsafe​  When I remove the space delimited layer list from Feature Types to Read. it does say (in gray) <All Features Types>. I have always had Single Output Port as my output ports radio selection.

I say ok and the transformer turns red. Also If the feature types is a space delimited list. Why isn't the tester a space delimited list?

I am able to run the workbench with the incomplete transformer.incompleteFME(R) 2021.0.0.0 (20201022 - Build 21214 - WIN64)

@gisbradokla
gisbradokla
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  • gisbradoklaEnthusiast
  • Author
  • Enthusiast
  • November 13, 2020
jovitaatsafe wrote:

Hi @gisbradokla2​,

I have just sent out a response to your case, my apologies for the delay. The Feature Types to Read is more applicable when you are reading in a single file because FME can grab them from one file and let you choose using the 'Select Feature Types to Read' dialog. The Feature Types to Read field expects values to be a space-delimited list of WWJD encoded parts according to this article, WWJD being a Safe Software-specific encoding. For these reasons, I don't think it's intended for a user to concatenate their own Feature Types to Read.

 

When reading from multiple files, we need a more generic approach, and with the generic approach FME can't know what feature types will be available before runtime since it's reading multiple files now. To summarize my email response a bit, I believe you will want to leave 'Feature Types to Read' blank, which will read all Feature Types by default, output as a Single Output Port, and your data should come out of the Generic port. If you have set some attributes to expose such as fme_feature_type and autocad_source_filename, you will be able to then filter out what feature types you wish to work with using Testers or TestFilters for example.

 

Hope that clears things up, and I definitely welcome any other input from the Community, as I'm not sure I've explained the FeatureReader the best.

I don't see any response on the ticket.

@gisbradokla

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