Hi,
What is the difference between Table Aggregator and Text Aggregator?
As far as I can see it’s quite similar - so I was wondering when should I use each.
Can you please give an example when to use each that the other will not work?
Regards,
Ram
From my understanding, text aggregator provides more flexibility and control in terms of what data you want to aggregate; plus it will allow you to insert and define the data structure that you want to aggregate more freely. But having said that both of them although provides similar output and control, they are built for separate purposes and it entirely depends on your use case on when to use any one of those.
Table Aggregrator
This will allow for easier access to the output of source module or any module in between through the selection menu. For eg, If you are using Google Sheets module to Search for Rows and if you want to convert them to CSV based on the data received, you can easily select the fields you want to use and then basically define row and column separator you want which will be new row and comma.
The main advantage of using this is when you have a predefined data that you want to aggregate and you want to simply perform without needing to modify the content.
If you want to do the same using text aggregator, you will need to do following,
Text Aggregator
Now, What Text Aggregator signs in comparison to Table Aggregator is the better flexibility and better control over the data that you are trying to aggregate. For eg, If you want to apply formula or add conditions to the data and modify the data based on the output of previous modules you can easily do that in text aggregator, it is although possible in the table aggregator as well by using Set Variables module.
The other thing that it provides is the control over output, for eg, if you want to generate a JSON or XML then using text aggregator is advisable.
So, Overall from my experience they both although have similar use case but one provides better ease of use, and the other more flexibility on the desired output. I almost never use Table Aggregator unless I have straightforward output I want.
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Superb explanation.
Thanks!
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