ASCII files

In the [PLUG-IN] section of the.ini file, you define the path using a wildcard notation specifying which files will be processed.

For example, to process all text files with names that start with ProcData, you set the IFM parameter as follows:

IFM = "C:\Data\ProcData*.txt"

During every scan, the interface reads the files whose name satisfies the IFM filter. One after the other, those files are then moved into the directory with the PI_UFL executable. Each file to be processed is temporarily renamed by prefixing the original name with an underscore and the interface Service ID; then the whole file is read into memory and the lines in the file are processed by the interface. Because of the temporary renaming of in-process files, new files with the same name as the original can be copied into the data directory while the interface is currently processing a temporarily renamed file.

Note: To read input data files on another computer, the PI UFL interface copies the files from the source machine to where the PI UFL interface is running. Thus, the PI UFL interface accesses the file through the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol, which operates over TCP port 445.

After successful processing the input data files are renamed with a suffix indicating the time of processing and moved back to their original location. During the next scan the whole process repeats.

Files can be processed in order by filename, creation date or modification date.