Introduction
The implementation of AS4.NET can be expanded by writing custom connectors. This document explains how these custom connectors can be created to extend the AS4.NET component with some custom functionality (delivery of messages to other locations, retrieve payloads that must be sent from other locations, receive messages from custom sources, …).
AS4.NET Components
The AS4.NET component consists of different Agents, each with a different responsibility: sending, receiving, forwarding, notifying, delivering, … Each Agent inside the AS4.NET component has three major items: Receiver, Transformer, and Steps.
The Receiver is the first component inside an Agent that takes the initiative. It receives messages that the Agent can process. When a message is received by the Receiver it will first be transformed by a Tranformer before it goes through one or many Steps. The Transformer will make sure that the end result is a canonical-format message so we can reuse Steps across Agents. The Steps will adapt the message, update external sources, and finaly send the result to the target that needs the message; this can be another Agent or a external target.