7.3. Filtering and validating items

The processing phase of a chunk-oriented step not only can modify read items but also can filter them. Imagine reading a flat file containing some products that belong in the database and some that don’t. For example, some products don’t belong to any of the categories of items sold in the store, some products are already in the database, and so on. You can use an item processor to decide whether to send a read item to the item writer, as shown in figure 7.5.

Figure 7.5. An item processor filters read items. It implements logic to decide whether to send a read item to the item writer.

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