Defining formatters in transaction editor

About this task

Formatters are what the toolkit uses to exchange data between toolkit entities such as operations, contexts, and services. Each formatter converts a specific data item into a string representation of the data item and parses a string into a specific data item. When you are defining either a flow or an operation using the Transaction editor, you have the option to define new formatters. Some of them are automatically generated by the tool when adding data mapping to flow transitions.

For a full description about how formatters work, the default provided formatters and how to configure them, you can refer to section Formatters.

For a full description about the default formatter and decorator properties, you can refer to section: Formatter external definitions and Decorator external definitions

Procedure

To define data for a new formatter, do the following steps:

  1. In the Transaction editor, click the Format tab.
  2. Right-click in a blank area of the Formatter panel of the Format tab, and then click New Child > fmtDef
  3. In the Detailed Information panel, enter the id of the new formatter and start adding children to it by right-clicking in the Formatter panel with the new formatter selected.

Results

Once the formatter has been created, you can use the formatter simulator that allows you to simulate the Formatter unformat process. It helps to speed up the development process by ensuring that the formatter definition is valid. Refer to section Formatter Simulator for a full explanation on how to set up and run this tool.