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EDI Format

Description​

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) covers common X12 and EDIFACT text dialects used in business messaging. IterableData provides a pragmatic, read-only segment parser: it detects separators, then yields one dict per segment (segment_id, elements). This is for streaming inspection — not a full HIPAA/mapping validation suite. Marked experimental. No optional dependency.

File Extensions​

  • .edi — EDI interchange documents
  • Other text EDI filenames may work when format is forced

Implementation Details​

Reading​

  • Reads the full document text, then splits into segments
  • Auto-detects segment terminator and element separator from the prefix (ISA / UNA / heuristics)
  • Optional overrides: segment_terminator, element_separator
  • Record shape: {"segment_id": "ISA", "elements": ["00", ...]}
  • Not streaming at the I/O layer (is_streaming() is False)

Writing​

Writing is not supported (WriteNotSupportedError).

Key Features​

  • X12 + EDIFACT heuristics: ISA and UNA recognition
  • Pure Python: no extra packages
  • Separator overrides via iterableargs

Usage​

from iterable import open_iterable

with open_iterable("invoice.edi") as source:
    for seg in source:
        print(seg["segment_id"], seg["elements"][:3])

with open_iterable(
    "invoice.edi",
    iterableargs={"segment_terminator": "~", "element_separator": "*"},
) as source:
    for seg in source:
        print(seg)

Parameters​

ParameterTypeDefaultRequiredDescription
segment_terminatorstrautoNoSegment delimiter (e.g. ~ or newline)
element_separatorstrautoNoElement delimiter (e.g. * or +)
encodingstrutf8NoText encoding

Installation​

pip install iterabledata

No format-specific extra.

Limitations​

  1. Read-only
  2. Experimental / pragmatic subset — not a full EDI mapper
  3. Whole-document load before yielding segments
  4. Nested composite elements are not further split beyond the element separator
  5. Binary EDI variants are out of scope

Error Handling​

  • WriteNotSupportedError: write mode or write APIs
  • FormatParseError: empty document when detecting separators
  • I/O errors: missing or unreadable files
  • No third-party ImportError for this format
  • CSV — delimited tabular text
  • XML — structured markup (when partners use XML instead of EDI)
  • JSON — modern interchange payloads