File Object

Most files in CSPro are data files, whose structure is defined by a data dictionary are are used in logic by referring to their dictionary names. However, it is also possible to write to text files without an associated data dictionary. Lines of text can be written to a file or read from a file, and these files can also be used in export statements.

The physical name of the file can be specified in the Define File Associations dialog when the application is run, in a PFF file, or by using the File.open, open, or setfile functions.

Functionality

A File is a CSPro logic object and the following functions can be called via dot notation:

Function	Description
open	Associates the File object with an existing or a new file on the disk (equivalent to setfile).
close	Closes the open file (equivalent to close).
read	Reads one or more lines of text from the file (equivalent to fileread).
write	Writes one or more lines of text to a file (equivalent to filewrite).

getLabel	Returns the symbol's label.
getName	Returns the symbol's name.
getJson	Returns the symbol's metadata and value represented in JSON.
getValueJson	Returns the symbol's value represented in JSON.

In addition to these object functions, File objects can be used as arguments to functions such as filecopy, filedelete, fileempty, fileexist, filename, filerename, filesize, open, and pathname.

Assignments

When a File object is used as an argument to a user-defined function, it is passed by reference.

Example

File login_times_file;
login_times_file.open("Login Times.csv", append);
login_times_file.write("%s, %s, %d", getdeviceid(), getoperatorid(), timestamp());
login_times_file.close();