Skip to main content
TCP Server connectors support hosting a generic endpoint for receiving data over TCP.

Key Capabilities

  • Generic TCP/IP server endpoint with TLS/SSL and plain text support for arbitrary data streams
  • Configurable message delimitation using static delimiters or length-based parsing
  • Bidirectional communication with Connection ID-based routing and connection event messaging

Overview

Each TCP Server connector listens on a specified port for incoming TCP traffic, either with TLS/SSL encryption or plain text. Use this connector when needs to receive arbitrary data that does not necessarily fit into the constraints provided by other standard protocols. Since TCP traffic is a constant stream that does not intrinsically have a start or end point, you must configure the connector to determine where one message ends and the next begins. The connector supports two approaches:
  • A static string/character delimiter that ends the current message or begins the next message
  • Reading a value in the incoming TCP data to determine how long the message should be
For the second approach, the connector requires an offset (how many bytes after the first byte to begin reading the message length) and a size (how many bytes to read, starting at the offset, to get the length value). If the length of the message is the first value in the header for the message, the offset is 0. Once the delimiter or length is reached, the connector pushes a message into the flow containing the raw data received over TCP. The TCP Server connector can also generate an message when a client connects or disconnects, to alert other processes within the flow. See the Connected and Disconnected Messages section for more information. For information on sending responses back to TCP clients, see the Sending Messages section.

Connector Settings

Settings Tab

Configuration

Settings related to the core configuration of the connector.

Message Decoding

Settings related to distinguishing individual messages from the TCP stream.

TLS Settings

Settings related to TLS/SSL transport security.

Advanced Tab

Keep Alive

Settings related to keep-alive packets sent by the server to maintain an idle connection.

Advanced Settings

Settings not included in the previous categories.

Message

Logging

Miscellaneous

Server Tab

Trusted IP Addresses

Automation Tab

Automation

Settings related to the automatic processing of files by the connector.

Performance

Alerts Tab

SLAs Tab

ログタブ

Connected and Disconnected Messages

By default, the TCP Server connector only generates messages when clients transfer data that the connector recognizes as a full message (according to the settings in the Message Decoding section). The connector can also generate messages when a client connects to the server (if Connected Messages is enabled on the Advanced tab) or disconnects from the server (if Disconnected Messages is enabled on the Advanced tab). When these special messages are generated, a special header is added to the message: x-tcpserver-event This header is set to the value connected when clients are connecting, and disconnected when clients are disconnecting. This header value must be checked by later connectors in the flow to detect whether a message written to the output folder of a TCP Server connector is one of these special messages.

Sending Messages

The TCP Server connector also uses a special header value to send messages back to connected clients: x-tcpserver-connectionid This header is added to any output messages generated by the connector, and is set to a Connection ID value that uniquely identifies the connected client. Messages that should be sent back to this client must have this header set to the same value to ensure that the message is sent to the appropriate client. Since this header is already present on any messages written out by the connector, if the message passes through an flow and arrives back at the Transactions for the TCP Server connector, it still has the same Connection ID value and is returned to the client that sent the original message. If the message cannot be directly routed back to the TCP Server connector, the Connection ID value must be saved and applied as a header (with the name shown above) to any new messages that should be returned to the client.

Macros

Examples