Returning a value from a child Job to the parent Job

You may need to return a value or rows from a child Job to the parent Job for further use. This article shows the best practice of how to pass a value with a tBufferOutput component from a child Job to the parent Job.

Creating the child Job

In this tutorial, you will create two Jobs: a parent Job and a child Job. The child Job will read data from a text file, populate the total number of rows and pass the rows to the parent Job.

The input file, named in.txt, is as follows:

id;name
1;Shong
2;Elise
3;Sabrina

This Job will use the following components:

a tFileInputDelimited component to read data from a text file and a tLogRow to print it on the console to create the first subjob,
a tFixedFlowInput component, to populate the total number of rows read by the tFileInputDelimited and buffer it with a tBufferOutput.

Procedure

Create a Job and name it childJob.
Add a tFileInputDelimited component and a tLogRow component on the workspace and link them with a Row > main connection.
Add a tFixedFlowInput component and a tBufferOutput on the workspace and link them with a Row > main connection. Link the first subjob to the second with a Trigger > On Subjob Ok connection.
Click the tFileInputDelimited component to open its Basic settings view and fill the File name/Stream with the .txt file path and the Header field with 1.
Click the Edit schema button to create a double column schema as below:
Double-click the tFixedFlowInput to create a one column schema named nb_line of Integer type. In the Values box, add the value ((Integer)globalMap.get("tFileInputDelimited_1_NB_LINE")).
Double-click the tBufferOutput component to configure its schema as follows:

Creating the parent job

This Job will use the following components:

a tRunJob component to call the childjob and get the value buffered by the tBufferOutput component in the child Job and pass it to a tJavaRow component.

Procedure

Create a Job and name it parentJob.
Add a tRunJob component and a tJavaRow component on the workspace and link them with a Row > main connection.
Double-click the tRunJob component to open its Basic settings view. Select childJob in the Job field and check if the schema of the tRunjob corresponds with the schema of tBufferoutput called in the Job.
Double-click the tJavaRow component and add the following code in the Code field:
```
System.out.println("The total number of rows is:"+input_row.nb_line);
```
Double-click the tBufferOutput component to configure its schema as follows:
Execute the parentJob Job. The results are printed on the console:
Tip: Note the importance of using a tBufferOutput component in a child Job to buffer records. The tRunJob reads the records from the buffer and transfer them to the next component.