Search And Filter By Content
Once a value is pulled into a metadata field, you can search and list files by it in the Files.com app and API — find every file where the country code is US, not just every file whose name happens to contain it.
Route And Filter Files By What’s Inside Them
Files.com reads field values out of structured files — XML, JSON, EDI, HL7, CSV — and turns them into custom metadata you can search, filter, automate, and route on. A file lands with a country code buried in its XML, Files.com pulls that value into a metadata field, and routes the file on it automatically — with no parser to write and no separate content engine to run.
See Inside The File, Not Just Its Name
Most file platforms only know a file by its outside: its name, its size, when it showed up. That’s why so much routing ends up leaning on naming rules that partners never follow the same way twice. File extraction lets Files.com look inside the file and act on what’s actually in it.
Take a common job: pull a country code out of an inbound XML file and send the file to a different place depending on the value. Today that means a custom Lambda to parse, extract, and re-route. With file extraction you point at the field once, and from then on the value is part of the file’s record — something you can filter, automate, and audit on.
What The Metadata Unlocks
Once a value is extracted into metadata, the rest of the platform can act on it the same way it acts on any other file attribute.
Trigger Automations On It
Extracted values can kick off an automation rule. “Move files where country is US to one folder, files where country is CN to another” is a rule you set once, not a custom script you have to maintain.
Route By What’s Inside
Send a file somewhere based on a value buried inside it, not on its filename. No more relying on naming rules that partners never follow the same way twice.
Keep It In The Audit Record
The content classification becomes part of the immutable audit record, not a one-time lookup that disappears. How a file was sorted is recorded alongside everything else that happened to it.
Extraction Is The First Half Of The Pipeline
Extraction and transformation are usually paired: pull a value out of a file, then use TransformScript to reshape the file based on it and route the result. Together they’re the engine behind the broader extract, transform, and verify story — turning a file that just arrived into data your downstream systems can use right away.
Extraction usage consumes Transformation and AI Credits, included per plan and scaling by tier. See what your plan includes on the pricing page.
Zip And Unzip Without Downloading First
Extraction reads inside a file without pulling it down. Zipping works the same way. Select a set of files and folders and bundle them into a single .zip for delivery, or select an archive and extract it in place — all on the platform, with nothing downloaded to a laptop first.
Zip and unzip run as background jobs, so a huge archive or a deeply nested folder tree processes without tying up your session. You can browse a .zip to see every filename and its uncompressed size before you extract, and pull out one file or the whole archive. It works from the web app, the CLI, and the API alike, and every zip and unzip lands in the audit trail like any other file action.
File Extraction Questions
What teams ask about which file types extraction reads, what the metadata can do, how zip and unzip work, and how it differs from AI-driven extraction of messy inputs.
Make File Content First-Class Metadata
Start a free trial, point Files.com at the field you care about, and watch it become searchable, filterable metadata the moment a file arrives — ready to route and automate on.
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