How the e-Mail adapter and data handlers work

The e-Mail adapter is designed to use data handlers to convert business objects to specified formats and convert data in specified formats to business objects. A data handler is not part of the adapter but is a separate module that can be customized or replaced as needed.

You can either use data handlers provided by IBM or write your own data handlers. If the data is in a proprietary format or the IBM-delivered data handlers do not support your application's data format, you must write a custom data handler. For example, IBM provides a data handler that converts between business objects and XML data. If your application generates HTML documents rather than XML documents, you would need to implement a custom data handler that would convert between business objects and HTML data.

Before you begin to work with e-Mail adapter, take time to analyze the data formats that your implementation will need to support. Then use the information in Table 5 to determine whether you can use the data handlers provided by IBM.

Table 5. WebSphere business integration system-delivered data handlers
IBM-delivered data handlers Description
XML data handler Converts business objects to and from XML documents. Supports XML 1.0.
NameValue data handler Parses text data based on named fields, for example, fields that identify the business object type.
FixedWidth data handler Parses text data using fixed-length fields. The field lengths are specified by the MaxLength property of each business object attribute.
Delimited data handler Parses text data based on a specified delimiter that separates the individual fields of a business object's data.

For information on data handlers, see the Data Handler Guide. If you determine that you must write a custom data handler, see the Data Handler Guide for information on how to do this.

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