These variables are strings, and are optional. It is the content type and encoding to use for the flat file document. You can specify either or both variables.

If your partners send documents directly to your document gateway service (as opposed to through an intervening service), Trading Networks tries to determine the content type and content encoding of the submitted flat file document.

If you are using the gateway service directly, you need to specify content type and content encoding, else it will assume a default value, which is application/x-wmidatabin for content type and UTF8 for content encoding. If you are directly sending the document to the gateway service, you should specify the content type and content encoding. You can provide the content type and content encoding to make sure Trading Networks uses accurate values.

For example, if a document with a content type of text/plain and an encoding of SJIS is submitted to a service and that service passes the document into the pipeline to your document gateway service, the original content type and content encoding will be lost. The pipeline has a content type of application/x-wmidatabin and a content encoding of UTF8. In this case, your gateway service or the service that invoked it should specify text/plain for TN_parms/$contentType and SJIS for TN_parms/$contentEncoding.