Mule 3 CE - File Processing Order

Question

Good morning to everybody, I have a problem using Mule ESB CE with file order. In the mule flow I have a File Inbound Endpoint that triggers the flow when one or more files come into a specified directory.

Let's assume that i have three files (a.txt,b.txt,c.txt), and I'd like to process b.txt first then a.txt and finally, c.txt.

How can I do that?

I read something about "File Processing Order" comparator that allows to write an own custom comparator but i did not find any example (neither in the Mule documentation).

Could anyone explain how to write a simple "file comparator" that order those files as above?

Thanks in advance. Best Regards PL

Answer 1

Just implement a custom comparator, and declare your file endpoint like this:

<file:inbound-endpoint connector-ref="fileConnector"
       path="${path}" 
       moveToDirectory="${move.path}"
       moveToPattern="#[message.inboundProperties['originalFilename']]" 
       comparator="your.package.comparators.YourComparator"
/> 

Note that I've had some classloading problems using custom comparators with file endpoints(at least on 3.3.1 CE), notably this bug.

Let's assume that i have three files (a.txt,b.txt,c.txt), and I'd like to process b.txt first then a.txt and finally, c.txt.

How can I do that?

As for the actual ordering, you need to use some collation to decide the order. This may be simple, or very complicated.