BLOB parser and domain

Messages in this domain are processed by the BLOB parser. The BLOB parser is a program that interprets a bit stream or message tree that represents a message that belongs to the BLOB domain. The parser then generates the corresponding tree from the bit stream on input, or a bit stream from the tree on output.

A BLOB message is handled as a single string of bytes, and although you can manipulate it, you cannot identify specific pieces of the byte string using a field reference, in the way that you can with messages in other domains.

You can process messages in the BLOB domain in the following ways:

• You can refer to the message content if you know the location (offset) of particular information within the message. You can specify offset values in ESQL statements within nodes in a message flow to manipulate the information.
• You can store the message in an external database, in whole or in part (where the part is identified by the offset of the data that is to be stored).
• You can use the Mapping node to map to and from a predefined BLOB message, and to map to and from items of BLOB data. The BLOB message cannot be:
  • The message content in a message where Content Validation is defined as Open or Open Defined (for example, the message body of a SOAP envelope)
  • The message represented by a wildcard inside another message
  The UnknownParserName field is ignored.

The BLOB message body parser does not create a tree structure in the same way that other message body parsers do. It has a root element BLOB, which has a child element, also called BLOB, which contains the data.

For example, InputBody.BLOB.BLOB[10] identifies the tenth byte of the message body; substring(InputBody.BLOB.BLOB from 10 for 10) references 10 bytes of the message data starting at offset 10.

If you want to use the BLOB parser to parse a particular message, select BLOB as the Message Domain on the relevant node in your message flow.

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