Incorporating EDI into project

General
1

Hi

Can anyone help me or point me in the right direction to write EDI routines in Xojo?

Thanks

Chris

2

You’ll probably get a better response if you post or move this to one of the more publicly available sections.

3

Really depends on whose services your trying to connect to as they will have an API you need to interact with

4

EDI itself it pretty straightforward to parse. The big trick is mapping it to your application and keeping all the identifiers so that when you send back information it will be recognized by the destination.

What version?
Transaction types?
How will you be connecting to the VAN?

5

Here is a simple class to parse an EDI file and a small program that can be used to view the file in a grid.

clsEDI.zip

6

An ISA segment is fixed width so you can pull out what the segment, element and sub-element separators are w/o knowing prior to opening up the file. From there, it becomes a matter of splitting the data by those elements. That will get you at the data. The real trick is then determining what each individual segment actually means since it is dependent upon the location it occurs in the file.

As Bob has said, what version and transaction types?

7

Thanks very much for the responses. My big problem is I didn’t even realise the existence of VANs before I asked the question, so I don’t know the version or transaction type, except that it would be Invoices, Credit Notes, Purchase Orders and maybe Payments (if that’s what’s meant by Type). Is X12 the current version?

I take it that if I want to send EDI to or from my customer, I will need to see if they already have a VAN, otherwise source one and check what version they are using?

Do all EDIs of the same version and type use the same protocol?

Thanks again for your replies and thanks Bob C for the example - an example paints a 1000

8

Do you know the volume you will be processing? Sometimes it is best to start with a Web based EDI solution like SPSCommerce and then grow into a fully automated solution. And sometimes you are forced into jumping straight into the deep end.

Here are some introduction to EDI documents I found that each have their own strengths:

http://www.slideshare.net/gxsinc/introduction-to-edi-basics

http://www.dicentral.com/downloads/An%20Introduction%20to%20EDI.pdf

http://hilltop.bradley.edu/~simonp/atg383/edipindx.html

http://www.edibasics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/WP_EDI_Primer_GXS.pdf

Almost every EDI provider worth doing business with will have a good introduction on their site.

Also I highly recommend EDI Notepad to view, validate and hands on learn about various EDI document formats and options.