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PageGate Advanced ASCII Setup Transcript
for Video:
Welcome to the tutorial on how to configure the
Advanced Options for the GetAscii module in PageGate.
In this tutorial, we'll be going over how to
configure the program to read in non-standard
ascii data types.
Before we begin with the configuration, I'm going
to pull up an example of a standard ASCII data
file.
You should notice that the first line of the
file is the recipient the message should be delivered
to.
The second line identifies who sent the message.
The third and following lines tells the program
what message to be sent to the recipient.
Now I'm going to pull up an example of a nonstandard
ASCII data file.
You should notice that the data looks nothing
like the standard file. Even though the data is
in different places and parsed by different strings,
the program can still read this data file in,
parse the data, and send out the message.
So, to begin, run the PageGate Admin.
In Windows, go to your start menu, go to programs,
find the PageGate program group, and left click
on the PageGate Admin.
Once in the Admin, left click on the + next to
Interfaces.
Then click on the + next to GetAscii.
Click on the + next to Settings under GetAscii.
Left click on the + next to Advanced Polling
and you'll see these sections expand: Files, Symbols,
Record, Recipient, Sender, and Message.
The first step is to click on the Files section.
The Files section allows you to specify new polling
directories and also allows you to specify nonstandard
file types for the program to look for.
Left click on Add.
In the Add Polling Entry section, you'll see
the following fields.
The Recipient section allows you to specify whether
files of a certain type should always go to the
exact same recipient or group or if it should
apply to all recipients and groups.
For this example, we're going to leave the Recipient
as an Asterisk, indicating all recipients and
groups.
Next is the From field. If you want to hard code
a sender's name that will override any sender's
information read in from a file, enter it here.
In the Files section, specify the specific file
name or extension of the files to look for.
If you remember, my nonstandard sample file ended
in .txt
By default, PageGate does not look for .txt files
but it looks for .asc files. In order for PageGate
to read in a .txt file, we'll need to enter *.txt
in the File(s) section.
Next is the path. If these .txt files are going
to be written to the standard polling directory,
enter it there. If the fields are going to be
written to a completely separate directory, left
click on the elapses button, browse out to the
folder, select it, then left click on okay.
Finally, we have the File Type. Since we want
to read in a nonstandard ASCII data file, change
this to Custom.
After entering your information, left click on
Apply.
Left click on Apply one more time to close the
Advanced Polling files.
The next category is Symbols.
By default, the program considers the following
characters as special symbols:
? represents a single character wildcard.
* represents Multiple characters.
~ represents the end of record symbol.
\ represents the beginning of an ASCII value.
More often than not, you'll want to leave these
symbols on their default values.
Next we have the Record section.
The record defines the full record, from beginning
to end, and should not be confused with the message.
All information contained within a single file
is considered a record.
If we want PageGate to consider all information
in a file, from start to finish, a record then
we'll need to change the start pattern to a *,
indicating any character can be the first character
of the record.
Then change the End Pattern to a ~ and left click
on Apply.
Next we have the Recipient section.
In this section, we can specify a static recipient
or group, indicating that all custom files processed
should always go to a specific recipient or group
or we can choose to have the program dynamically
process the data of the record for the recipient
information.
In this case, we want to have a Dynamic Recipient.
In the background, you should see the nonstandard
sample that we saw earlier.
To get PageGate to properly process the data,
we'll need to tell it how to do so.
The Start Pattern indicates the character or
string of characters that will always precede
the recipient value. In the example file, this
is Name=
So, in the Start Pattern, enter Name=
The Start Offset, in this case, needs to be set
to 5 since Name= is five characters. This tells
PageGate not to actually include the Start Pattern
as part of the recipient's name.
The End pattern indicates the character or string
of characters that will always come after the
recipient value. In this example, it's a carriage
return.
To enter a carriage return as an end pattern,
we first need to know what the ASCII value for
a carriage return is. It's \013. If you'll remember
the \ indicates the ASCII value delimiter and
let's the program know that this sequence is to
be considered an ASCII string.
Change the End Offset to -1 to tell the program
not to include the carriage return as part of
the end pattern.
Below that, you'll see a checkbox that says "Use
Lookup Table".
The lookup table function allows use to modify
data on the fly. So, in the example data file,
you'll see that the recipient referenced is 'sample'.
I don't have a recipient named sample, so the
message will fill if the program attempts to read
the data in as it is.
Put a check in Lookup Table, then left click
on the Edit Table button.
Left click on Add.
Now, in my example, I don't have a recipient
named sample, so for the data in, I'm going to
enter sample
Then, in the data out, I'm going to enter the
name of a valid recipient in the program: sample_smtp_recipient.
Left click on Apply, then left click on Apply
again.
Next is the Sender section.
In my example file, the sender is denoted by
the 'Generated by=' line.
So, my start pattern is going to be Generated
by= and the start offset is going to be 13, since
there are thirteen characters in Generated by=
Next, we need to tell it the End Pattern. In
the Recipient section, we used a carriage return
because it was the first carriage return in the
file.
If we attempt to use a carriage return in the
sender's end pattern, the program won't know what
to do and won't process the data properly.
In my example file, my end pattern for the Sender's
information is actually the following line. So,
in the end pattern, I'm going to enter Generated
on= and set the offset to -14. The reason I set
it to -14 is that I want the program NOT to include
the data value... and I also don't want it to
include the carriage return.
As in the recipient section, you can use the
lookup table to search and replace data strings
within the sender's value.
Left click on Apply.
The final section is the message section.
In my example file, the start pattern would be
Message contents= and my start offset will be
17.
The end pattern we will set to a ~ because we
want all information between Message contents=
and the end of the file. Leave the end offset
at zero.
Left click on Apply.
This concludes the tutorial for how to configure
the Advanced Options for the GetAscii module in
PageGate. For more tutorials, including how to
configure the other modules of PageGate, please
visit our website, www.notepage.net
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