topic [resolved] empty string to null for all string fields in Talend Studio

[resolved] empty string to null for all string fields

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 17:50:59 GMT

I am working with data many hundreds of fields wide. For every string field I need to convert empty string "" to null. I can do this field by field with a tMap or tReplace component but it is tedious to set the transformation for each field when there are hundreds of them.
Is there a way to do this where I don't need to specify each field. Like a "perform this transformation for all fields" capability?

Re: [resolved] empty string to null for all string fields

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:21:32 GMT

Hi,
Have you tried to useTalendHelpCenter:tFileInputFullRow-->tReplace to replace all your empty string "" to null?
tFileInputFullRow can a file and reads it row by row and sends complete rows as defined in the Schema to the next Job component.
Best regards
Sabrina

Re: [resolved] empty string to null for all string fields

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 16:18:28 GMT

That works. I found that I needed to use advanced mode and replace with empty string rather then null.
pattern: "\"\""
replace: ""
but I still need to get the field broken back out by schema. In writing the file out and reading it back in with schema I found that just the defaults of the tFileOutputDelimited component would also remove the "". So I can just read the file, write it out, and read it back in.