Recently, I developed a custom file adapter called the FILE-Z adapter, which I blogged about on the BizTalk360 blog. This is an adapter created from the original idea of my dear friend Nino Crudele. It is a custom File adapter that can read empty files.
You can see his original blog post: BizTalk and zero-byte file from Nino Crudele. And you can download the FILE-Z adapter here: FILE-Z adapter GitHub page.
But while I was searching for this adapter, I found an interesting blog post by Yan (Pamela) Yang describing a different scenario. Some systems can create empty files without locking them. Then, they grab the files again and write some data to them. However, this behavior may cause problems with the default BizTalk Server FILE adapter. For example, the adapter may grab the file AFTER the system creates the empty file, but BEFORE the system attempts to write to it, causing integration issues. Or, in other cases, we may not want to pick up those empty files.
You may also know that the native FILE adapter released with BizTalk grabs and deletes all zero-byte (empty) files without triggering any associated processes. Instead, it logs a warning or error saying that:
The FILE receive adapter deleted the empty file “dir:<folder>\<file-name>” without performing any processing.
This behavior, according to Microsoft, is by design. Though you can argue that it is inconsistent how different adapters handle empty files, e.g., the FTP adapter can transfer empty files with no problem.
📝 One-Minute Brief
Discover the FILE‑RADITZ adapter, a custom BizTalk Server file adapter designed to ignore empty (zero‑byte) files. Unlike the default FILE adapter — which deletes zero‑byte files — and unlike the FILE‑Z adapter — which processes them — FILE‑RADITZ leaves empty files untouched, preventing premature pickup in scenarios where external systems create placeholder files before writing real data.
The File-RADITZ adapter is, kind of, the arch-enemy of the File-Z Adapter. This adapter doesn’t pick up or process empty (zero-byte) files. Instead, it leaves the empty files in the original folder.
I decided to create or recreate this adapter based on Yan Yang’s scenario, just for fun, and for mentoring on how you can create your custom File adapter by making use of:
- DotNet File Adapter sample source code that was available on previous versions of the BizTalk Server SDK
This adapter can be used as a Receive Adapter or as a Send Adapter.
Why the name File-RADITZ?
Well, I named the other adapter FILE-Z because it meant to mean File-Zero, but in reality, because I was a massive fan of Dragon Ball Z :). As I mentioned before, this adapter is, kind of, the arch-enemy of the File-Z Adapter. So, to come up with a better name, I chose Raditz, a memorable Dragon Ball villain who was one of the first enemy encounters in Dragon Ball Z.
How to install it?
If you want to install the BizTalk Server FILE-RADITZ Adapter, you need to:
- Access the FILE-RADITZ Adapter GitHub page and download the executables from the executables folder.
- Place the folder BizTalkFileRADITZAdapter in any location on your BizTalk Server box. I recommend putting it in:
- C:\Program Files (x86)\
- Note: if you put in any other path, you need to modify the StaticAdapterManagement.reg file
- Access the folder and double-click on the StaticAdapterManagement.reg file
This will register the adapter to run under 32-bit host instances. To make it available also for 64-bit, you need to:
- Click Start.
- Type %windir%\SysWoW64\cmd.exe in the search box and press Enter.
- Run the same adapter registry (.reg) file from this command prompt.
Now you just need to add this adapter to the BizTalk Server Administration Console:
- Open BizTalk Administration Console by pressing the Windows key to switch to the Start menu, typing BizTalk Server Administration or BizTalk, and clicking the BizTalk Server Administration option from the Search window.
- In the console left tree, expand BizTalk Server Administration > BizTalk Group > Platform Settings and then Adapters.
- In the Adapter Properties
- In the Name box, type a descriptive name for this adapter.
- FILE-RADITZ
- In the Adapter combo box, select the adapter you want to add from the drop-down.
- FILE-RADITZ
- In the Description box, type a description for the adapter (optional).
- BizTalk Server File Adapter that is able to process all files except empty (zero-byte) files.
- In the Name box, type a descriptive name for this adapter.
- Click OK to complete the adapter addition process.
Where can you use it?
This version available on GitHub is currently compiled on .NET 4.7.2 and optimized for BizTalk Server 2020. Nevertheless, you can take this code and compile it in other versions of .NET and BizTalk Server. It will be 100% compatible.
Download
THIS ADAPTER IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
You can download the BizTalk Server FILE-RADITZ Adapter from GitHub here:
Hope you find this helpful! If you liked the content or found it useful and would like to support me in writing more, consider buying (or helping to buy) a Star Wars Lego set for my son.
