Spooled File Utilities › Spooled File Router

Spooled File Router

The Spooled File Router allows you to predefine rules for spooled files created on your IBM i that control automatic processing occurring for those spooled files.

You can add rules as spooled file routing entries that select spooled files based on any combination of their output queue, name, user, the job that produced them, or their user-defined data attribute, and then process the spooled files that meet the specification criteria. You can apply any spooled file commands for processing. You can also specify that other commands run following the spooled file processing—such as notifying certain users when spooled files are processed.

For instance you can specify rules so that:

• Spooled files arriving on the QPRINT output queue with a USRDTA attribute of MYATTR, produced by user JOHN should be immediately converted into HTML files in the /YSPLFS/User/JOHN/ directory. In addition, user JOHN should be notified that the above processing has occurred.
• Spooled files arriving on the QSYS/QEZJOBLOG output queue, which were produced by user QSPLJOB, should be copied to a specified physical file member and then deleted.
• Any spooled files on any output queues, which have the USRDTA attribute as blank, should have the USRDTA attribute set to the name of the user who produced the spooled file.

You can use any or all of the above examples.

Spooled file routing entries are added, edited, and deleted with the YWRKSPLRTE (Work with Spooled File Routing Entries) command.

Once spooled file routing entries have been created, a spooled file router can be started by using the YSTRSPLRTR (Start Spooled File Router) command and ended using the YENDSPLRTR (End Spooled File Router) command. Additionally the YRSTSPLRTR (Restart Spooled File Router) command is available to restart the spooled file router, if spooled file routing entries have been added, changed, or deleted.

The Spooled File Router can be distributed to any of your IBM i systems, even if the machine in question does not have the full CA 2E Toolkit installed.