Entity transformers
In lesson 1 of this course, we briefly touched upon entity transformers and what they do. It’s time to delve a bit deeper into the concept and how it works.
As explained above, entity transformers are used to map, change, or enrich your data. They are used to execute data actions within the integrations, such as transforming data into desired formats and developing caching layers that optimize the integrations. For example, if system A has information about a customer that only includes a name field and system B has a customer with a first and last name, the transformers can split that field into two and fill both fields.
Entity transformers typically perform tasks such as:
- Data format conversion: Converting data from one format to another, such as transforming JSON data to XML or vice versa.
- Data structure mapping: Mapping fields and attributes from one data structure to another. This includes renaming fields, rearranging data, or converting data types.
- Data enrichment: Adding additional information to the data from external sources or by performing calculations or lookups.
- Data normalization: Validating incoming data to ensure it meets certain criteria and cleaning up data inconsistencies or errors.
- Data filtering and routing: Filtering out unnecessary data or routing data to different destinations based on certain conditions.
- Data aggregation and summarization: Aggregating data from multiple sources and summarizing it for reporting or analysis purposes.
Overall, entity transformers play a crucial role in ensuring seamless communication and data exchange between integrated systems within Alumio, and they are one of the key features of our platform. They help streamline processes, improve data quality, and ensure that data is accurately interpreted and utilized by the receiving systems.
Transformers can also enrich a data object by accomplishing extra API calls. In the Alumio dashboard, entity transformers can be created and altered by going to Connections -> Entity transformers. If you open the Transformers page, you can view all the transformers present within a specific environment with different names. While naming a transformer, you must make it a point to make the function of the transformer easily understandable with the naming.
You can use as many transformers as needed within the incoming and outgoing configurations or a route. A combination of transformers (having a specific use case) will allow you to map or transform the data as required. This approach also makes the transformers and data transformations more recognizable and manageable.
How do you create and maintain entity transformers?
Possible configuration fields:
- Name - A name describing the transformation this configuration performs, i.e. Move customer_id to customer_number field
- Identifier - A unique identifier for this entity transformer (this field is automatically generated based on the name).
- Description - Detailed description for the entity transformer.
- Disabled - A flag that indicates whether the entity transformer configuration is disabled. Disabled entity transformer configurations do not process data.
- Settings - The type of entity transformer to be used for this configuration.
If you want to know more about transformers and how to use them, please go to this page on the Forum: How To Use The Alumio Entity Transformer Page
