HOW TO: make your own scriptable import

Classic Servoy
1

Hi,
in one of my solutions I needed to import data to certain files, with a specific field-order, and field-seperator, etc..etc..
Because the import-plugin won’t allow us to do scriptable import (yet), I made a method of my own.

make a method, called: importFile

var fieldnames = arguments[0] 	// boolean, first row contains fieldnames
var seperator = arguments[1] 	// string, choose seperator, for example:  "\t" for TAB "," or ";"
var quotes = arguments[2] 		// boolean, ColumnNames with quotes
var columnnames = arguments[3]	// string, ColumnNames seperated by: ";"
var filename = arguments[4]		// string, the file to be imported.

var fileContents = application.readTXTFile(filename) 

// split the columnames into an Array
var columnArray = columnnames.split(";")
// determine how many columns are used
var columnCount = columnArray.length

//put each line into an array item 
var fileLines = fileContents.split("\n"); 

//determ if the first line has fieldnames, which should not be imported
if(fieldnames == true) var begin = 1
else var begin = 0

//fileLines is now an array with 1 item per line 
//now loop through the array to get to the cells 
for ( i = begin ; i < fileLines.length ; i++ ) 
{ 
	foundset.newRecord();
	var cellsArray = fileLines[i].split(seperator); 
	for (var x = 0 ; x < columnCount ; x++)
	{
		var index = foundset.getSelectedIndex()
		var record = foundset.getRecord(index)
		if(cellsArray[x]) //check if cellArray is not empty or null
		{
			var column = cellsArray[x]
			var columnlength = column.length
			if(quotes == true)
			{
				var a = column.substring(1,columnlength - 1)	
				record[columnArray[x]] = a
			}
		}
	}

}

make another method: startImportFile

//first argument: boolean, first row contains fieldnames
//second argument: string, choose seperator, for example:  "\t" for TAB "," or ";"
//third argument: boolean, ColumnNames with quotes.
//fourth argument: string, ColumnNames seperated by: ";"
//fifth argument: string, the file to be imported.
importFile(true,";",true,"customerid;companyname","D:/Mijn Documenten/file_export.mer");

If you do some more studying , you could make it work with related-fields, which is not even possible Servoy itself!

Enjoy!