CopybookUtils

Commands to convert fixed-record files described by a copybook record layout from EBCDIC to ASCII, converting only the alpha-numeric fields.

The Gem can also be used to create scripts.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'copybook_utils'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install copybook_utils

Command-line Usage

A command convert_from_ebcdic is in the gem bin directory. It is recommended to copy convert_from_ebcdic from the bin directory to an appropriate place on your system (also copy convert_from_ebcdic.bat to the same place if on a Windows system).

Run the command from a terminal or command prompt. The command usage is:

convert_from_ebcdic <Copybook file> <EBCDIC data file> <ASCII converted file>

This command parses the copybook file that contains the record layout for the EBCDIC data file. The EBCDIC data file is read record by record converting the alpha-numeric fields from EBCDIC to ASCII. The output is written to ASCII converted file.

All binary fields (e.g.: comp-3, etc) are copied from the input records to the output records unchanged.

Gem Usage

To use CopybookUtils:

require 'copybook_utils'

Converting Copybooks to XML

To convert a copybook to XML (wrapper around cb2xml Java jar from the copybook to XML project):

result = CopybookUtils.copybook_to_xml( copybook_filename )

Result contains:

result[:xml]            # XML string representing copybook
result[:error_out]      # error info from conversion process
result[:process_status] # the Process::Status from running java; non-zero is an error

The XML may be parsed with your favorite XML parser (e.g.: Nokogiri).

Converting Data Files between ASCII and EBCDIC

CopybookUtils.to_ascii( copybook_xml, data_file_input, data_file_output )
CopybookUtils.to_ebcdic( copybook_xml, data_file_input, data_file_output )

These methods take the XML from CopybookUtils.copybook_to_xml and convert the data_file_input creating the data_file_output. The input file must be a fixed-record file with the record layout described by the copybook. Note that fixed-record files do not have newlines at the end of each record.

Development

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install.

To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release to create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

  1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/copybook_utils/fork )
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create a new Pull Request