Bundled EDI Viewer

The API Server includes a local instance of the EDI Viewer.

The UI of the viewer is similar to our public EDI Viewer, but without file size and claim/payment limits.

You can use the viewer to make sense of your EDI files and to complement your in-house UI. The viewer is a perfect tool for helping you understand all the data elements in your EDI files.

The viewer doesn’t use the database. It performs parsing entirely in memory. The uploaded files are deleted when you restart the server.

You don’t need a separate license to run the viewer; your EDI Converter’s license key gives you access to the viewer.

Accessing the Viewer

Once you install the API Server, the viewer is available at http://localhost:8080/ediviewer. Update the “http://localhost:5080” with the actual URL of your API Server if needed.

Follow the instructions here if you need to implement HTTPS.

File Size Limit

Out of the box, the viewer has a file size limit of 5MB. You can change this limit by setting the ediviewer_filesizelimit environment variable:

ediviewer_filesizelimit=20000000

Note that, since the viewer performs all parsing in memory, it may become unresponsive if the file size is too large.

You also need to ensure that the Docker container hosting the viewer has sufficient memory.

The API Server itself does not need a large amount of memory, so you may want to run the viewer on a separate Docker container.

If you run the API Server without Docker, make sure to increase the heap size of the java command by supplying the -Xmx8g option.

Note that loading files directly from the file system by supplying the “file” query parameter (see below) is more efficient than uploading files to the viewer.

Loading a File Automatically with a Query Parameter

Instead of manually uploading files, you can supply the file name in the viewer’s URL using the file query parameter. The file must be available on the file system.

If you run the viewer in a separate Docker container, you will need to create a bind mount to the directory containing the files.

For example (using Docker Compose):

- type: bind
  source: <pahth-to-my-files on the host>
  target: /app/my-files

You can then set the ediviewer_filebasedir variable to /app/my-files.

After that, you can specify the file name that you want to load as a file query parameter:

http://localhost:8080/ediviewer?file=my-file.edi

Alternatively, you can use the /app/load volume exposed by the API Server’s Docker container.

Additional Configuration Options

You can configure the maximum number of EDI parsing warnings that the viewer will display by setting the ediviewer_maxwarnings environment variable.

It defaults to 30.