About the Properties Field

You can add a _properties document field to a publishable document type to have custom header fields added to documents published to Universal Messaging. When a service publishes an instance of the document type, Integration Server adds the contents of _properties as name=value pairs to the header. Specifically, Integration Server adds child fields of _properties and their specified values to the header. For example, suppose that a publishable document type contains a _properties document with a child field named myField. If you set myField to 5, when Integration Server publishes the document it adds myField='5' to the document header.

A webMethods Messaging Trigger can create a provider filter to be used with the custom header fields. The filter allows the webMethods Messaging Trigger to indicate which documents it wants to receive based on the header contents. Universal Messaging saves the filter along with the subscription to the document type. When Universal Messaging receives an instance of the publishable document type, Universal Messaging applies the filter to the custom header fields. Universal Messaging enqueues the document for the trigger only if the filter criteria is met.

Note: Integration Server uses the contents of _properties as custom header fields document when the document is published to Universal Messaging only. For all messaging providers, Integration Server includes _properties in the body of the published document.

For the contents of the _properties field to be added to the message header of a published document, _properties:

Must be a Document or Document reference variable.

Must be at the top-level of the publishable document type. That is, _properties cannot be a child of another document in the document type.

Can include any number of fields.

Can contain fields of type String.

Can contain Object fields with a Java wrapper type of:

java.lang.Boolean

java.lang.Byte

java.lang.Character

java.lang.Double

java.lang.Float

java.lang.Integer

java.lang.Long

java.lang.Short

java.util.Date

Should not contain fields of type Document, Document List, Document Reference, or Document Reference List. When creating the message header, Integration Server ignores the content of fields of these types in _properties. Integration Server includes the entire contents of _properties the published document, but Integration Server only uses scalar fields that are direct children of _properties in the message header.

For information about creating a filter for use with custom header fields, see Creating a webMethods Messaging Trigger .