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To Trigger a Flow When a New File is Created or Modified

Anypoint Connectors for File, FTP, and SFTP provide an On New or Updated File operation that polls a directory for files that have been created or updated. A message is generated for each file that is found.

The following strategies determine that a file is new:

  • Set the Auto delete field to True to delete each file after it is processed, which causes all files obtained in the next poll to be considered new.

  • Set the Move to directory field to move each file to a different directory after it is processed, which achieves the same effect as Auto delete but without erasing the file.

  • Set the Watermark field to pick only files that have been created or updated after the last poll was executed.

You can also use a matcher for additional filtering of files.

Example: File Listener (On New File Trigger)
<flow name="onNewFile">
    <file:listener config-ref="file" directory="test-data/in" autoDelete="true">
      <scheduling-strategy>
        <fixed-frequency frequency="1000"/>
      </scheduling-strategy>
    </file:listener>

    <flow-ref name="processFile" />
</flow>

Watermarking

For the File connector, the watermarking strategy can be used in two different modes: CREATION_TIMESTAMP or MODIFIED_TIMESTAMP. The strategy depends on whether you want to filter files based on their creation or modification time.

Example: Watermarking with the File Listener
<file:listener doc:name="On New File"
  config-ref="File_Config1"
  watermarkMode="CREATED_TIMESTAMP">
    <scheduling-strategy >
      <fixed-frequency />
    </scheduling-strategy>
</file:listener>

Repeatable Streams

The List operation makes use of the repeatable streams functionality introduced in Mule 4. The operation returns a list of messages, where each message represents a file in the list and holds a stream to the file. A stream is repeatable by default.

For more information, refer to Streaming in Mule 4.

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