Parse Structured
form
Completing the Steps tab
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The Steps tab of the Parse Structured form looks and works much like the Steps tab of the Activity form, with three differences described here.
You can use all the methods and instructions accepted by the Activity form. You can use preconditions, transitions, and iterations. See Activity form — Completing the Steps tab.
On the Steps tab of the Parse Structured form, you can use all methods available to activities, plus four parsing methods:
These four methods consume portions of the input string, advancing a cursor.
The input may contain record delimiter or line
terminator characters marking the end of each line or record.
To position the cursor appropriately for the next record or
line, include a step that skips over these characters.
. Examine the input carefully,
as files created on Windows and UNIX platforms may follow
different line terminator conventions.
For example, if a Windows TXT file contains useful data in 100 bytes plus the carriage return and line feed characters (/n/r) at the end of each line, the second data segment starts at offset 102, not byte 100. Use Parse-Char-Pos method with an Offset parameter of 2 to discard the two unneeded characters.
If creating an iteration in a Parse Structured form, you can
select For Each Page, For Each Embedded
Page, and For Each Element in Value List.
These operate identically in a Parse Structured step and an
activity step. For details on these three iteration choices,
see Activity
form — Completing the Steps Page —
Iteration.
You can also select Steps Repeat
Definition, a choice not available on the Activity form.
This choice allows you to specify that a single step is to be
repeated a number of times, based on numeric literals or
property values, rather than based on a collection or
aggregate.
Field |
Description |
| Start |
Enter a literal integer or numeric property reference that characterizes the first execution of the step. |
| Stop |
Enter literal number or numeric property reference that characterizes the final execution of the step. |
| Repeat by |
Enter a literal number or numeric property reference that characterizes the increment value for each execution of the step. |
If you enter 1, 10, and 1 respectively, the step executes ten times. If you enter 40, 101, and 10 for the values, the step executes six times.
Field |
Description |
| API Version |
Choose |
On the Security tab of the Parse
Structured form, set the Activity Type to
Activity.