Using a connector in a message flow

The capabilities of a connector are exposed to a message flow in a user-defined node. Before you can use that user-defined node, you must install it into your IBM® Integration Toolkit.

Before you begin

Learn more about connectors in Connectors overview.

About this task

Connectors can be used in IBM Integration Bus to interact with applications or data sources. A connector developer creates a connector for the runtime environment and a user-defined node for the IBM Integration Toolkit. The connector developer provides this user-defined node in a plug-in JAR file. You can develop message flows by using the user-defined node in the same way as the built-in nodes.

Procedure

To install the user-defined node into your IBM Integration Toolkit, complete the following steps:

  1. Copy the user-defined node plug-in JAR file into the dropins folder in your IBM Integration Toolkit installation location: install_dir/tools/dropins.

    For example, the default installation directory on Windows is C:\Program Files\IBM\IIB\version\.

  2. To ensure that the new files are available to the IBM Integration Toolkit, restart the Toolkit.

Results

The user-defined node for your connector is displayed in the palette in the Message Flow editor. If the connector developer specified a category in the user-defined node project, the user-defined node is displayed beneath that category.

What to do next

Add the user-defined node to a message flow by following the instructions in Adding a message flow node.