Reading Specific Fields in an External Data File

[ericBerkow]

I have a job that has multiple external data files, which are all formatted the same.

 

       det1     det2     det3
cpn1 
cpn2
cpn3 

 

I am having trouble getting FP Desktop to read the correct fields. Here is my code to get the data from the fields:

returnStr = (activeExDF.GetFieldValue(activeExDF.FindRecord, 'cpn1'), 'det1')
return returnStr;

 

Whatever I type where 'det1' is appears in the validation box. For example, I changed it to 'cat' even though there is no field called 'cat' in the data. The validation returns 'cat' instead of throwing an error.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Dan Korn]

The syntax is messed up. You're not actually calling the FindRecord function, and that extra string after the comma isn't a parameter to any function call. I think you want to do this:

return activeExDF.GetFieldValue(activeExDF.FindRecord(1, 'cpn1'), 'det1');

The "1" in there is to denote the first field, which appears to be unnamed from the sample data you posted. You could use the field name in there instead, if there is one.

 

You might also want to check the result of the FindRecord call to better handle a failure case; something like:

var recNum = activeExDF.FindRecord(1, 'cpn1');
if (recNum < 0)
   return "Record not found!";
return activeExDF.GetFieldValue(recNum, 'det1');