Output Formatters

To enforce reusability of your test data assets, GEDIS Studio distinguishes the design of the generators and the production of datasets from those generators. Production of datasets is controlled with Output Formatters.

What are Output Formatters ?

The output formatters are used to configure the production of datasets by selecting the generators and the fields to assemble and by formating their values into dataset files.

Output formatters can produce regular CSV files based on all or a subset of the generated fields. They can also mix in a same file the records produced by different generators allowing variable length records in the same dataset.

Output formatters can arrange fields in a different way they are arranged in their generators; they can also format each value of each field separately to do alignements, trimering, or to surround values with quotes.

How to Configure Output Formatters ?

Generators and Record Formatters

The first things to do is to select the generators that will provide the values to be assembled in the dataset. Each selected generator will produce their own records and you should define a record formatter for each of them. A record formatter is usually a CSV Formatter or a Template based formatter.

Text Encoding

Then you can select the encoding of the text (UTF-8 is the basic encoding, but you can choose another).

Header and Footer

It is also possible to include a header at the beginning of the generated dataset file and a footer at the bottom. The content of the header and footer may contain references to some of the parameters of the dataset production such as the number of generated records, the timestamp of generation, etc.