Conditional Container Contents

[Doctor Rufus]

I am new to this forum, and have been digging deep into FM for over a year (v 4-8) now.

I'm using 8 (&7) on WinXPpro to generate calculated containers to show multiple images for an individual object. That works fine, as long as the actual image file is named the same as what I predetermine. The plan is to not have to insert up to 1000's of images.

My problem: I want to add a flag in the container calc to display a placeholder "Unavailable" image if the file referenced is not there. Instead of showing the text "The file cannot be found:path", another image would show up, indicating missing image.

Hope this is clear, and hope someone can help. I've tried almost every Logical Function in the Field Definition possible.

Thanks, Sean

[Doctor Rufus]

So, what I ended up doing with this, is to just add a flag field for each image field, which is set up as a check-box. If the box is checked, a placeholder image is displayed; unchecked, the standard image is displayed, unless, of course it is not there. Unfortunately, it is a manual solution, but seems to be the only work around, besides scripting things.

Thanks for reading, and thinking.

[Fenton]

The Troi File plug-in has a file length test which, if used in an unstored calculation, can tell you if the referenced file is there or not. It produces a known error if it's not, which you can do a (slow) Find for.

There are other plug-ins that can do this also I imagine. There would be command line tests on either platform (can't say for Windows), but those would require scipting.

[Doctor Rufus]

Thanks, but I'll have to stick with what I did. Not into plugins, at this point.

[Wim Decorte]

Like Fenton mentions, you can do this without plugins too, using the available OS level scripting. A plugin just makes it a whole lot easier.