File:Inbound Channel Adapter <-- Polling for primary and secondary file

[chrisccoy]

We are working with a third party FAX solution that will route incoming faxes into specified inbound directories, based on phone number. I am using SI to control the flow of these files, but the 3rd party solutuion has introduced a small gotcha. Unfortunately, rather than submitting a single "tar" or "zip", each fax transmission is comprised of 2 files (image and meta-data). I created a custom filter to relate the files together, but I am forced to manually manage the secondary file outside of the SI adapters, which I do not like.

I know there is a better way to do this. Does anyone have a good idea on how to implement a better solution for this?

[Mark Fisher]

You should be able to rely on an Aggregator where the correlation-strategy is based on something that those 2 files have in common (while also uniquely identifying the pair).

[chrisccoy]

OK, I was thinking something similar, but I mistakenly thought the aggregator required a splitter. I will investigate your idea further. Thanks for responding.

[Mark Fisher]

No, an aggregator can be used downstream from *any* source that happens to produce Messages that should be correlated as a group. It's also quite common to have an aggregator downstream from a publish-subscribe-channel or even a router that sends to multiple channels.

Hope that clarifies.
-Mark

[chrisccoy]

Thank you Mark,
The aggregator has been working perfectly, but I have 1 concern. I am wondering what would you suggest, in terms of moving these paired files to another location? Currently, after aggregation and processing, I am using a splitter directed to an outbound-channel-adapter to perform the move; and while that has been working, I was a little concerned about a partially successful move of 1 message with a subsequent message failing due to diskspace or some other unexpected I/O error. Ideally, I'd like to move the 2 files together and perform the delete-src, once the move of both files is successful. I am slowly grasping all of these concepts, but fear I am missing fundamental here.