Validation

It is important to ensure that messages contain the fields that you expect prior to those messages being processed. There are some mechanisms for validating the contents of the fields that you parse. Those mechanisms are dependent on the type of data you are extracting.

Automatic Validation

In some cases, the validation occurs automatically. For example, if you specify a number, either decimal or integer, the parser will ensure that no textual characters are present in the field prior to assigning the field to a storage value and making it available to the rest of the workflow.

The following are fields that are automatically validated:

Storage Type	Validation
Boolean	A value that represents true or false. Text values are not case sensitive. Examples include “True”, true, False “false” or 0, 1.
Decimal	A real number such as 1.25, 5, -12.30, 0
Integer	A whole number such has 1, 5, -5, 1,000,333 or 0
Geolocations	A valid latitude and longitude. For a full description of what is valid, please see Working with Geolocation Values for more information.
State Sets	State Sets are an important data type in that they ensure that only the values you specify can be assigned. For example, if your State Set only includes `on` and `off` and the value you receive is True, that value will be considered invalid.
Strings	Almost any value can be stored to a String Location. Currently, only ASCII values are supported. If your message sends unicode strings, please Contact Us for assistance.
Values with Units	Values with Units or Unit Sets are units that can be applied to a value. Validation on incoming values is the same as for a decimal value. However, you can specify the number of digits to the right of decimal place (precision) for storage.

Additional Validation

For All Storage Type Values

Is Required - You can mark this field if it is required. If it is not present in the message, the message will be considered invalid and processing will not continue.

For String Storage Type Values

RegEx Validation - If the value you are extracting is a string, you can add a regular expression that will be used to validate the contents of that string value.

For Integer and Decimal Storage Type Values

Minimum Value and Maximum Value - You can provide values that will limit the range either to a minimum value, a maximum value, or both to indicate acceptable incoming values. These values are inclusive of the range values. For example, if a minimum value of 8 was specified, a value of 8 would be valid but 7.99999 would not. If minimum or maximum value is not present, no validation will take place. It is possible to have a minumum value without a maximum value and vice-versa.