Watched folder in AEM Forms

folderPath (String): The path of the folder to be scanned at a defined time-intervals. For a clustered environment, the folder must be at a shared location with all servers having full access to the server. It is a mandatory property.

inputProcessorType (String): The type of the process to start. You can specify workflow, script, or service. It is a mandatory property.

inputProcessorId (String): The behavior of the inputProcessorId property is based on the value specified for the inputProcessorType property. It is a mandatory property. The following list details all the possible values of the inputProcessorType property and corresponding requisite for the inputProcessorType property:

• For workflow, specify the workflow model to be executed. For example, /etc/workflow/models/<workflow_name>/jcr:content/model
• For script, specify JCR path of the script to be executed. For example, /etc/fd/watchfolder/test/testScript.ecma
• For service, specify the filter used for locating an OSGi service. The service is registered as an implementation of com.adobe.aemfd.watchfolder.service.api.ContentProcessor Interface.

runModes (String): A comma-separated list of allowed run-modes for workflow execution. A few examples are:

• author

• publish

• author, publish

• publish, author

outputFilePattern (String): Pattern of the output file. You can specify a folder or file pattern. If a folder pattern is specified, then the output files have names as described in workflows. If a file pattern is specified, the output files have names as described in file pattern. File and folder pattern can also specify a directory structure for the output files. It is a mandatory property.

stageFileExpirationDuration (Long, default -1): The number of seconds to wait before an input file/folder which has already been picked up for processing should be treated as having timed out and marked as a failure. This expiration mechanism only activates when the value for this property is a positive number.

deleteExpiredStageFileOnlyWhenThrottled (Boolean, default true): Whether the expiration mechanism should activate only when the watch-folder is throttled. The mechanism is more relevant for throttled watch-folders since a small number of files which are lingering around in an unprocessed state (owing to intermittent job/workflow misfires) have the potential to choke processing for the entire batch when throttling is enabled. If this property is kept as true (the default), the expiration mechanism will not activate for watch-folders which are not throttled. If the property is kept as false, the mechanism will always activate as long as the stageFileExpirationDuration property is a positive number.

pollInterval (Long): The interval in seconds for scanning the Watched Folder for input. Unless the Throttle setting is enabled, poll Interval should be longer than the time to process an average job; otherwise, the system may become overloaded. The default value is 5. See the description for Batch Size for additional information. The value of the pollinterval must be greater than or equal to one.

excludeFilePattern (String): A semi-colon (;) delimited list of patterns that a Watched Folder uses to determine which files and folders to scan and pick up. Any file or folder with this pattern is not scanned for processing. This setting is useful when the input is a folder with multiple files. The contents of the folder can be copied into a folder with a name that are picked up by the Watched Folder. This prevents the Watched Folder from picking up a folder for processing before the folder is completely copied into the input folder. The default value is null.
You can use file patterns to exclude:

• Files with specific filename extensions; for example, *.dat, *.xml, .pdf, *.*

• Files with specific names; for example, data* would exclude files and folders named data1, data2, and so on.

• Files with composite expressions in the name and extension, as in these examples:

  • Data[0-9][0-9][0-9].[dD][aA]‘port’
  • *.[dD][Aa]‘port’
  • *.[Xx][Mm][Ll]

includeFilePattern (String): A semi-colon (;) delimited list of patterns that the Watched Folder uses to determine which folders and files to scan and pick up. For example, if the IncludeFilePattern is input*, all files and folders that match input* are picked up. This includes files and folders named input1, input2, and so on. The default value is * and indicates all files and folders. You can use file patterns to include:

• Files with specific filename extensions; for example, *.dat, *.xml, .pdf, *.*
• Files with specific names; for example, data.* would include files and folders named data1, data2, and so on.

Files with composite expressions in the name and extension, as in these examples:

• Data[0-9][0-9][0-9].[dD][aA]‘port’

  • *.[dD][Aa]‘port’
  • *.[Xx][Mm][Ll]

waitTime (Long): The time, in milliseconds, to wait before you scan a folder or file after it is created. For example, if the wait time is 3,600,000 milliseconds (one hour) and the file was created one minute ago, this file will be picked up after 59 or more minutes have passed. The default value is 0. This setting is useful to ensure that a file or folder is completely copied to the input folder. For example, if you have a large file to process and the file takes ten minutes to download, set the wait time to 10*60 *1000 milliseconds. This prevents the Watched Folder from scanning the file if it is not ten minutes old.

purgeDuration (Long): Files and folders in the result folder are purged when they are older than this value. This value is measured in days. This setting is useful in ensuring that the result folder does not become full. A value of -1 days indicates to never delete the results folder. The default value is -1.

resultFolderName (String): The folder where the saved results are stored. If the results do not appear in this folder, check the failure folder. Read-only files are not processed and are saved in the failure folder. This value can be an absolute or relative path with the following file patterns:

• %F = filename prefix
• %E = filename extension
• %Y = year (full)
• %y = year (last two digits)
• %M = month
• %D = day of month
• %d = day of year
• %H = hour (24-hour clock)
• %h = hour (12-hour clock)
• %m = minute
• %s = second
• %l = millisecond
• %R = random number (between 0–9)
• %P = process or job id

For example, if it is 8 PM on July 17, 2009 and you specify C:/Test/WF0/failure/%Y/%M/%D/%H/, the result folder is C:/Test/WF0/failure/2009/07/17/20

If the path is not absolute but relative, the folder is created inside the Watched Folder. The default value is result/%Y/%M/%D/, which is the Result folder inside the Watched Folder. For more information about file patterns, see About file patterns.

failureFolderName (String): The folder where failure files are saved. This location is always relative to the Watched Folder. You can use file patterns, as described for Result Folder. Read-only files are not processed and are saved in the failure folder. The default value is failure/%Y/%M/%D/.

preserveFolderName (String): The location where files are stored after successful processing. The path can be an absolute, a relative, or a null directory path. You can use file patterns, as described for Result Folder. The default value is preserve/%Y/%M/%D/.

batchSize (Long): The number of files or folders to be picked up per scan. Use to prevent an overload on the system; scanning too many files at one time can cause a crash. The default value is 2.

The Poll Interval and Batch Size settings determine how many files Watched Folder picks up in every scan. Watched Folder uses a Quartz thread pool to scan the input folder. The thread pool is shared with other services. If the scan interval is small, the threads scan the input folder often. If files are dropped frequently into the Watched Folder, then you should keep the scan interval small. If files are dropped infrequently, use a larger scan interval so that the other services can use the threads.

If there is a large volume of files being dropped, make the batch size large. For example, if the service started by the Watched Folder endpoint can process 700 files per minute, and users drop files into the input folder at the same rate, then setting the Batch Size to 350 and the Poll Interval to 30 seconds help Watched Folder performance without incurring the cost of scanning the Watched Folder too often.

When files are dropped into the Watched Folder, it lists the files in the input, which can reduce performance if scanning is happening every second. Increasing the scan interval can improve performance. If the volume of files being dropped is small, adjust the Batch Size and Poll Interval accordingly. For example, if 10 files are dropped every second, try setting the pollInterval to 1 second and the Batch Size to 10

throttleOn (Boolean): When this option is selected, it limits the number of Watched Folder jobs that AEM Forms processes at any given time. The maximum number of jobs is determined by the Batch Size value. The defaut value is true. (See About throttling.)

overwriteDuplicateFilename (Boolean): When set to True, files in the results folder and preserve folder are overwritten. When set to False, files and folders with a numeric index suffix are used for the name. The default value is False.

preserveOnFailure (Boolean): Preserve input files if there is failure to run the operation on a service. The default value is true.

inputFilePattern (String): Specifies the pattern of the input files for a Watched Folder. Creates a allowlist of the files.

asynch (Boolean): Identifies the invocation type as asynchronous or synchronous. The default value is true (asynchronous). The file processing is a resource consuming task, keep the value of the asynch flag to true to prevent choking the main thread of the scan job. In a clustered environment, it is critical to keep the flag true to enable load-balancing for the files being processed across the available servers. If the flag is false, the scan job attempts to perform processing for each top-level file/folder sequentially within its own thread. Do not set the flag to false without a specific reason, such as, workflow-based processing on a single-server setup.

enabled (Boolean): Deactivates and activates scanning for a Watched Folder. Set enabled to true, to start scanning the Watched Folder. The default value is true.

payloadMapperFilter: When a folder is configured as watched folder, a folder structure is created within the watched folder. The structure has folders to provide inputs, receive outputs (results), save data for failures, preserve data for long-lived processes, and save data for various stages. The folder structure of a Watched Folder can serve as a payload of Forms-centric workflows. A payload mapper lets you define structure of a payload which uses a Watched Folder for input, output, and processing. For example, if you use the default mapper, it maps content of Watched Folder with [payload]\input and [payload]\output folder. Two out-of-the-box payload mapper implementations are available. If you do not have a custom implementation, use one of out-of-the-box implementation:

• Default mapper: Use the default payload mapper to keep input and output contents of the watched folders in separate input and output folders in the payload. Also, in payload path of a workflow, use [payload]/input/ and [payload]/output paths to retrive and save content.

• Simple File-based payload mapper: Use the Simple File-based payload mapper to keep input and output contents directly in the payload folder. It does not create any extra hierarchy, like default mapper.