.txt file into FTP server: keeping size formatting for text file in Blob

[andrewplaice]

Hi all,

Here I am back over my skiis again!  I built a process to output a .txt file to later be consumed by an FTP server.  It works great.  When manually uploaded the process consumed the file and did what was expected.

For my last step, I was given specifics on the FTP server only to learn I can't really output the file in current format to FTP... so it's time to learn.  The articles I have read don't seem to address this issue:

The FTP site is expecting a text file with given field lengths.  In some cases my data has null values and others the data lengths differ.  This doesn't matter when using a select tool as I just define the string field lengths before outputting to .txt.  How do I address this with blob?  The examples I see in prepping the data suggest I transpose and concatenate the data, but when I do this I lose field lengths and null value spacing.  

If Blob isnt required to upload a .txt file to FTP, I'd love to learn more.  Assuming I need to wade into the world of Blob how do I solve for this?

Let's assume my data looks like this (all string data with size 10 headers included)

Item Type	Communication	Status	Client	Product
BILLING	INTERN	INPROC	123456	CAN
TRAN		PEND	234567	TAK

But I need it to looks like this in the .txt so that each previous field has a size of ten:

BILLING   INTERN    INPROC    123456    CAN

TRAN                PEND      234567    TAK

Can anyone help? 

Thanks!

[TessaS]

Hi @andrewplaice 

Could you use a Formula tool to pad each field with 10 spaces?

[andrewplaice]

Hi.  I ended up solving this a different way.  The files saved and then a separate BAT file is executed to run an FTP script, which moves the files.  All still over my head, but with the  help of a colleague it is working.