Question

How to filter only native MapInfo tables


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I am building a workbench that uses Directory and File Pathnames Reader and Workspace Runner to run a translation on a bunch of MapInfo tables.

I want to only run the translation on native MapInfo tables. Not image tables, WMS table or links to oracle datasets.

I can do this easily enough in MapBasic, where I can use the TableInfo() function to return if a MapInfo table is of type TAB_TYPE_BASE.

Is there a similar transformer in FME? I have already looked at exposing attributes, but none of them are helpful


2 replies

Userlevel 2
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Hi @nicholas​ 

If you open a MapInfo TAB file in a text editor, you can see the following line within the file:

Type NATIVE

It may be possible to use the presence of this string to differentiate between native MapInfo tables versus other table types. For example, read the contents of the tab file as text through AttributeFileReader or Text File in FeatureReader and test for the presence of 'Type NATIVE' in a Tester/TestFilter or StringSearcher.

Unfortunately, I do not have the datasets to test this so I do not know whether it will work or not.

Badge +10

Thanks. I have also found another way. If the ".map" file exists, then the table is both native and mappable

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