Context Objects

Use

Context objects are only relevant if you want communication to take place by using the Integration Server (A2A, B2B or Web-service oriented). A good alternative to XPath expressions, context objects enable you to access the content of messages during configuration in the Integration Directory. Take the following message instance as an example:

<InvoiceOut>

<customerData>     <address>        <name> ... </name>        <postalCode> ...</postalCode>        ...     </address>     ...  </customerData></InvoiceOut>

To access the content of the <postalCode> field, you would use the following expression in XPath:

/InvoiceOut/customerData/address/postalCode

If you needed this expression in more than one condition, you would have to rewrite or copy it each time. Instead, you can assign a context object to the <postalCode> field, for example with the name postalCode. You can then use the postalCode context object in all conditions where you need the value of the <postalCode> field, which makes the conditions easier to read.

Comparison between XPath and Context Object

Once you have created a context object in the ES Repository and assigned a request message to the field, you can use it in the following situations:

• During receiver determination for a message, depending on its content
• During the processing of process steps in integration processes , depending on the content of a message

There is a series of predefined technical context objects for accessing the header information of the message.