Fixed Width Parser

The FIXED_WIDTH parser plugin is used to take in a string and extract the fields when they are originally sized by column width.

Parameters

field_widths: the length of each field, separated by commas. For example, ‘14,4,8’

remove_padding: OPTIONAL. Fields are often padded. This property is used to strip out the padding, for example spaces. There is no default value.

skip_fields: OPTIONAL, it ignores certain incoming fields. For example, let’s say you stream providers records with 5 fields, but your RioDB stream only cares about 3, then you can instruct which 2 fields from the original record are not wanted and should be skipped.

Syntax

PARSER fixed_width (
    field_widths '<integers separated by comma>'
    remove_padding '<a single char>'
    skip_fields '<comma-separated integers>'
)

Example

To parse records like “session_id,request_type,reresponse_time”

02938470293847POST0.32
20938472304872GET 0.12
2-304870238470POST0.42

You can use

PARSER fixed_width (
    field_widths '8,4,8'
    remove_padding ' '
)

If you don’t care about the first two fields:

PARSER fixed_width (
    field_widths '8,4,8'
    remove_padding ' '
    skip_fields '1,2'
)