Examples of Mapping with the Transform Card (Flow Designer)

If you followed the steps in the tutorial "Create Your First Mule Application with Flow Designer", then you have already performed such a mapping twice. Let’s take another look at both mappings.

First example

The first time, you needed to map the output of the Choice card to the input that was required by the NTO Order API.

Table 1. Data types output by the Choice card and the data type required by the NTO Order API
Data types output by the Choice card	Data type required as input by the NTO Order API
The Product Information data type [ { "productID": string, "category": string, "SKU": string, "productName": string, "inventory": string } ] The Salesforce Opportunity data type { "Amount": number, "Id": string, "CloseDate": string, "Name": string }	The Order Information data type { "OppId": string, "OrderAmount": number, "orderdate": string, "productInfo": { "productID": string, "category": string, "SKU": string, "productName": string, "inventory": number } }

Table 1. Data types output by the Choice card and the data type required by the NTO Order API

Data types output by the Choice card

Data type required as input by the NTO Order API

The Product Information data type

[
  {
    "productID": string,
    "category": string,
    "SKU": string,
    "productName": string,
    "inventory": string
  }
]

The Salesforce Opportunity data type

{
  "Amount": number,
  "Id": string,
  "CloseDate": string,
  "Name": string
}

The Order Information data type

{
  "OppId": string,
  "OrderAmount": number,
  "orderdate": string,
  "productInfo": {
     "productID": string,
     "category": string,
     "SKU": string,
     "productName": string,
     "inventory": number
     }
}

To do the mapping, you used a Transform card, clicking and dragging elements from the Input side to elements on the Output side. (In the Transform card, "input" and "output" are terms that are relative to the Transform card itself. The "input" to the Transform card was the output of the Choice card, and the "output" of the Transform card was the input to the Order API.)

Figure 1. The Transform card that mapped the output of the Choice card to the input required by the API

You had to do the mapping because the Order API (which was a REST API that you sent a POST message to) did not require all of the data that was in the output of the Choice card. Moreover, some of the elements of the data required by the API had names that differed from the corresponding elements in the Choice card’s output

Table 2. The requirement for mapping data from the Choice card to data for the Order API
This Element from the Choice card	Mapped to This Element for the Order API
`productID`	`productID`
`category`	`category`
`SKU`	`SKU`
`productName`	`productName`
`inventory`	`inventory`
`Amount`	`OrderAmount`
`Id`	`OppId`
`CloseDate`	`orderDate`

Second example

The second time you mapped in the tutorial, you did not need to set a data type explicitly for the input of the Twilio card. The Transform card was able to determine the data structure that the Twilio card required. Also, you did not map data elements. Rather, in the output of the Transform card, you used a DataWeave script to pull data from the input of the Transform card into a message to send customers. You also explicitly set the values of the To and From fields to particular phone numbers, as you can see here in the Script pane of the Transform card.

Figure 2. The Script pane of the Transform card, showing the DataWeave script that used data from the input to the Transformation card, as well as the phone numbers in the To and From fields

The Mappings pane showed this view:

Figure 3. The Mappings pane of the Transform card, displaying how the mapping looked

The f(x) markers on three of the field in the output payload show that those fields are populated with values that you supplied via strings or DataWeave expressions. Notice that OrderID, TrackingNo, and ETA in the input payload all map to Body in the output payload because the script in Body references those three payload elements.

Examples of Mapping with the Transform Card (Flow Designer)

First example

Second example

See Also