Plugins

Extractors

Major (Agent) Plugin-based Extraction Speed Improvements Just Went Live

We noticed the record insert portion of extraction taking far longer in plugins than in the core platform (with CSVs). We had to get to the bottom of why there was such a disparity and we’re thrilled to say we have a solution. We’re seeing a 700k file that once took between 10-12 mins now only takes 1-1.5 min!

But wait, there’s more:

Additionally, end users will now get updated percentages during the upload process and will receive a success message when the file is successfully extracted.

Upgrade your extractor(s) to the latest to enjoy this optimization:

• @flatfile/plugin-xlsx-extractor@1.7.5
• @flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor@0.7.3
• @flatfile/plugin-json-extractor@0.6.4
• @flatfile/plugin-pdf-extractor@0.0.5
• @flatfile/plugin-xml-extractor@0.5.4
• @flatfile/plugin-zip-extractor@0.3.7

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-psv-extractor@1.6.0 & @flatfile/plugin-tsv-extractor@1.5.0

We’re excited to announce that PSV and TSV file types, previously reliant on plugins, are now natively supported by the Flatfile Platform! 🚀

As part of this enhancement, we’ve marked these plugins as deprecated. Developers will receive a friendly console log notification, making it clear that these plugins are no longer needed. Enjoy the streamlined experience!

Core

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/util-response-rejection

Meet @flatfile/util-response-rejection, a new utility for showcasing rejected Records from an external API to your customers. Managing rejected data during egress is vital for maintaining data accuracy, and this utility simplifies the entire process, ensuring a smoother experience for handling these instances.

Here’s what it does:

1. Takes a ResponseRejection containing rejected Records and a rejection message.
2. Locates the corresponding Record and adds the rejection message as an error to the Record cell.

You can also utilize this utility directly with any listener.

Learn more in the docs.

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-extractor-___

All extractors have been fine-tuned to seamlessly handle extractions within a job, allowing the plugin more time to complete the extraction with less risk of the Agent timing out.

Additionally, we’ve resolved a bug that was causing extractions to falsely indicate completion when running in parallel, ensuring extraction truly finishes before signaling completion.

Transform

@flatfile/plugin-autocast@0.2.2

Dates that were cast to a UTC string using the autocast plugin were showing as invalid after transformation. A fix for this was added to version 0.2.2.

Learn more.

Transform

@flatfile/plugin-autocast

In the most recent update, we’ve introduced some exciting enhancements. You can now implement an optional fieldFilter to specify which fields autocast should operate on.

Check it out:

listener.use(autocast({ sheetSlug: 'bar' }, ['numberField', 'dateField']))

Learn more.

Extractors

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/plugin-autocast

Effortlessly transform data in your Sheets to align with the field types specified in the Blueprint.

Supported field types:

• Numbers: String numbers (‘1’), string decimals (‘1.1’), and string numbers with commas (‘1,000’) are interpreted as numbers.

• Booleans:

  • Truthy values: ‘1’, ‘yes’, ‘true’, ‘on’, ’ ’, ‘y’, and 1.
  • Falsy values: ’- ’, ‘0’, ‘no’, ‘false’, ‘off’, ’ ’, ‘n’, 0, -1.

• Dates: Date strings and numbers are cast to a UTC string.

  • ‘2023-08-16’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • ‘08-16-2023’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • ‘08/16/2023’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • ‘Aug 16, 2023’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • ‘August 16, 2023’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • ‘2023-08-16T00:00:00.000Z’ => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’
  • 1692144000000 => ‘Wed, 16 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT’

Note: @flatfile/plugin-record-hook listens for the same event type (commit:created). Plugins will fire in the order they are placed in the listener.

Check out the docs.

Extractors

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/plugin-jobs-handler

Our latest plugin, @flatfile/plugin-jobs-handler, streamlines handling Flatfile Jobs, which are a large unit of work performed asynchronously on a resource such as a file, Workbook, or Sheet.

Options at your fingertips:

• Update Job progress using await tick(progress, message), returning a promise for JobResponse.
• opts.debug Enable debug logging for the plugin

To get started simplifying the management of your Jobs, explore the README.

Extractors

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/plugin-space-configure

Streamline the dynamic setup of new Flatfile Spaces with @flatfile/plugin-space-configure.

How it works:

• The setup parameter holds the Blueprint for the new Space.
• And the callback parameter (invoked once the Space and Workbooks are fully configured) receives three arguments:

1. event
2. workbookIds
3. Using the @flatfile/plugin-jobs-handler under the hood, the tick function can be used to update the Job’s progress.

To simplify auto-configuring your Spaces, explore the README.

Extractors

All extractors now support chunkSize and parallel

A new version of an underlying utility (@flatfile/util-extractor) introduces 2 new options for extracting records in all extractor plugins:

• chunkSize: (Default: 3,000) Define how many records you want to process in each batch. This allows you to balance efficiency and resource utilization based on your specific use case.
• parallel: (Default: 1) Choose whether the records should be processed in parallel. This enables you to optimize the execution time when dealing with large datasets.

Note: Previously, we were extracting with a chunkSize of 1,000.

Ex: Excel Usage: (See docs)

listener.use(ExcelExtractor({ chunkSize: 300, parallel: 2 }))

If you update your extractor plugin to the latest, you will receive these new options.

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor

Now that the platform includes native support for TSV and PSV files, developers are no longer required to use a plugin specifically for these formats. As a result of this enhancement, the documentation for the @flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor has been revised to reflect this update.

For users who are already utilizing or have integrated a plugin for TSV and PSV files, there’s no need to worry about any disruptions. While the extraction will occur twice, resulting in a “extraction complete” status being displayed twice, the process remains functional and intact.

Extractors

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/plugin-pdf-extractor

Our latest plugin, @flatfile/plugin-pdf-extractor, introduces the power of parsing .pdf files in Flatfile.

Options at your fingertips:

• opt.apiKey: Feed in your pdftables.com API key to unlock the magic.
• opt.debug: Toggle debugging messages to streamline development.

Tech Behind the Scenes:

• Empowered by remeda for dynamic functional programming and data handling.
• Seamlessly integrates Pattern Matching with TypeScript through ts-pattern.

See the docs

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-dedupe@0.0.2

Includes fixes to properly job ack on failure and use a new instance of listener after a filter operation. It also adds server errors to logging.

Extractors

@flatfile/util-file-buffer@0.0.3

A fix was made to only run fileBuffer on uploaded files. This fixes an issue where extraction was occurring during export improperly.

All extractor plugins went up one tick to leverage this update to the file buffer.

Transform

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/@flatfile/plugin-dedupe

@flatfile/plugin-dedupe adds a touch of magic by seamlessly removing duplicate records right within a sheet with several options to fit your use case:

• opt.keep: Decide whether to hang on to the first or last duplicate record.
• opt.custom: Craft your own dedupe function, for those out-of-the-box scenarios.
• opt.debug: Toggle on those helpful debug messages when you’re in the lab.

Tech:

• Powered by ts-pattern for in-depth Pattern Matching in TypeScript.
• Leverages the mighty remeda for JavaScript’s functional programming and data wizardry.

See the docs

Extractors

🚀 Introducing @flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor

Introducing the latest addition to our extractor plugins: @flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor. Designed to streamline your data extraction tasks, this plugin is tailored to process delimited files including tab (\t), pipe (|), semicolon (;), colon (:), tilde (~), caret (^), and hash (#).

Parameters and Options:

• fileExt specifies the file name or extension to listen for, allowing you to define the file types to process.
• options.delimiter the delimiter character used in the file.
• options.dynamicTyping automatically convert numeric and boolean data in the file to their appropriate data types, ensuring accurate processing.
• options.skipEmptyLines: With ‘true’, completely empty lines (evaluating to an empty string) will be skipped during parsing. With ‘greedy’, lines with only whitespace characters are also skipped.
• options.transform define a function to be applied to each parsed value before dynamicTyping.

See the docs

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-xlsx-extractor@1.4.0

Includes a fix for ghost rows in Excel files (happened if there was formatting on a cell but no data)

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor@0.4.0 & @flatfile/plugin-xlsx-extractor@1.5.0

Adds ability to support duplicate headers with non-unique header keys.

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-delimiter-extractor@0.3.0 & @flatfile/plugin-xlsx-extractor@1.3.2

Adds header row auto-detection (the same function used for CSVs in platform) 

Extractors

@flatfile/plugin-zip-extractor@0.3.2

Includes a fix to exclude unwanted dir (MACOSX) and it now checks file name not full path