2023:Array (Collation Provider)

This article is about an older version of Grooper.

Information may be out of date and UI elements may have changed.

2025

2023

Array is a Collation Provider option for pin Data Type extractors. Array matches a list of values arranged in horizontal, vertical, or text-flow order, combining instances that qualify into a single result.

About

Array is one of the Collation Providers and can be used for data organization depending on what you want to extract from your documents. All of the Collation Providers (except for Individual) essentially take multiple results and combine them into one. Array specifically only returns results based on the orientation of the information. If the data is lined up horizontally or vertically, you must select the corresponding layout property for Grooper to return the information.

Essentially, an Array collated result is a collection of results who share a layout relationship that are all lined up together (either horizontally, vertically, or in the left/right and top/bottom text flow of the document).

⚠	The Array collation differs from the Ordered Array collation in one significant way. In an Ordered Array the order of the data matters. For the Array Collation Provider the data can be in any order and will all be returned as one result.

How To

You may download the ZIP(s) below and upload it into your own Grooper environment (version 2023). The first contains a Project with resources used in examples throughout this article. The second contains one or more Batches of sample documents.

Setting the Collation Property

The Horizontal Layout Property

The Vertical Layout Property

The Flow Layout Property

The Flow Layout Property should be used when the information you want to extract is contained within the flow of a paragraph or text. You will commonly find this in unstructured documents.

The Minimum Elements Property

You may have noticed when we first switched to the third document in the Batch with Vertical Layout two words were returned because there were two words that just happened to be stacked on top of one another. It returned when Grooper found two of the words, but not just a single word. The reason is because the Minimum Elements Property is set to 2 by default. The following screenshots will explain how this property works.

A Practical Example

Although the above examples make it easier to see how Array works, it is not something you'd probably see in the real world. The following screenshots give an example of how you might use a collation property in the real world.

Maximum Distance

Enforce Line Boundaries

Glossary

Array: Array is a Collation Provider option for pin Data Type extractors. Array matches a list of values arranged in horizontal, vertical, or text-flow order, combining instances that qualify into a single result.

Batch: inventory_2 Batch nodes are fundamental in Grooper's architecture. They are containers of documents that are moved through workflow mechanisms called settings Batch Processes. Documents and their pages are represented in Batches by a hierarchy of folder Batch Folders and contract Batch Pages.

Collation Provider: The Collation property of a pin Data Type defines the method for converting its raw results into a final result set. It is configured by selecting a Collation Provider. The Collation Provider governs how initial matches from the Data Type's extractor(s) are combined and interpreted to produce the Data Type's final output.

Data Type: pin Data Types are nodes used to extract text data from a document. Data Types have more capabilities than quick_reference_all Value Readers. Data Types can collect results from multiple extractor sources, including a locally defined extractor, child extractor nodes, and referenced extractor nodes. Data Types can also collate results using Collation Providers to combine, sift and manipulate results further.

Ordered Array: Ordered Array is a Collation Provider option for pin Data Type extractors. Ordered Array finds sequences of values where one result is present for each extractor, in the order they appear, according to a specified horizontal, vertical or text-flow layout.

Project: package_2 Projects are the primary containers for configuration nodes within Grooper. The Project is where various processing objects such as stacks Content Models, settings Batch Processes, profile objects are stored. This makes resources easier to manage, easier to save, and simplifies how node references are made in a Grooper Repository.