BizTalk File Adapter: Pick files from subfolders

Question

In File adapter configuration, we can specify a folder path to scan for new files. but this doesn't work if we want to monitor whole tree i.e. folder and all of its sub folders for new files. any idea how can I achieve this behavior in BizTalk 2006

Thanks

Answer 1

You're right - this is not possible with the BizTalk file adapter.

The only way I can think of achieving this in pure BizTalk would be to write your own custom file adapter. There is a wizard that will help you build a custom adapter in Codeplex here.

Some other options that may do what you need are:

• Programatically creating receive locations for each direcory in the tree (probably cumbersome if the tree is large)
• Aggregating the files using a windows service into one location (you would lose the context properties about the original location)
• Call a .NET helper component from within an orchestration that searches the directory tree (not a bad option but again you would lose the nice ability of BizTalk managing context properties for you - you would need to write some custom code that allows you to retain properties like the original location)