Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, you'll be able to:

• Understand the capabilities of the BulkAttributeRenamer transformer.
• Identify when it is appropriate to use the BulkAttributeRenamer transformer.
• Understand the BulkAttributeRenamer configuration options.

Introduction

Usual attribute renaming involves selecting individual attributes to modify. However, in some cases, it's important to be able to carry out the same renaming operation on a large number of attributes.

This scenario is catered for by the BulkAttributeRenamer transformer.

BulkAttributeRenamer

The BulkAttributeRenamer carries out the core function of renaming attributes. But instead of manually specifying each attribute, this transformer lets the user apply a renaming action to All Attributes or Selected Attributes.

The rename actions available are:

• Add String Prefix
• Add String Suffix
• Remove Prefix String
• Remove Suffix String
• Regular Expression Replace
• String Replace
• Change Case

The power of the transformer is its ability to rename multiple attributes at once without having to select them all individually. Here, for example, the incoming attributes are all being renamed to lowercase names to match a writer schema that does not support uppercase:

Multiple transformers can be used to create a cumulative effect. Here, for example, the user has converted to lowercase and then used a second transformer to add a prefix: