WRITE operator

The WRITE operator creates an action that writes a file from a property to an external resource.

Syntax

WRITE [CLIENT [DIALOG]] fileExpr TO urlExpr [APPEND]

Description

The WRITE operator creates an action that writes a file from the property to an external resource located at the specified URL.

The following URL types are supported:

[file://]path_to_file
[s]ftp://username:password[;charset]@host:port[/path_to_file][?passivemode=true|false]

It is assumed that the file extension is not specified in the URL (that is, the period . is also considered a part of the file name). This extension is determined automatically based on the class of the file being written:

Extension	Class
read from the passed object	FILE
json	JSONFILE
xml	XMLFILE
csv	CSVFILE
xls or xlsx, depending on the file content	EXCELFILE
dbf	DBFFILE
table	TABLEFILE
html	HTMLFILE
doc or docx, depending on the file content	WORDFILE
jpg	IMAGEFILE
pdf	PDFFILE
mp4	VIDEOFILE

The Downloads folder in the user folder is considered to be the current folder on the client side.

Parameters

• CLIENT

  Keyword. If specified, the action will be executed on the client side. By default, the action is executed on the server.

• DIALOG

  Keyword. If specified, before writing the file a dialog will be shown in which the user can change the specified URL. This can be used only when writing to the disk (the URL type is file). By default, the dialog is not shown.

• ulrExpr

  An expression whose value equals to the URL.

• fileExpr

  An expression whose value equals to the file that will be written to an external resource.

• APPEND

  Keyword. If specified, the file is re-read from fileExpr and appended to the file at urlExpr. For the csv extension, data is added to the end of the file. For xls and xlsx, all sheets from the fileExpr file are copied to the file at the specified location urlExpr. Not supported for other extensions. By default, the file is rewritten.

Examples

loadAndWrite ()  {
    INPUT f = FILE DO {
        WRITE f TO 'file:///home/user/loadedfile.csv' APPEND;
        WRITE CLIENT f TO '/home/user/loadedfile.txt';
        WRITE CLIENT DIALOG f TO 'loadedfile';
    }
}