Container field

[StarBuck99]

Field A is a number field for Employees ID number like: 1234

Field B is supposed to be a container field for photo.

The photos are always going to be located in the folder

D:emp_photo

and the pictures are always going to be labeed based off the employee ID.

D:emp_photo1234.jpg

How would you get the container field "B" to automatically store the picture based off the default directory and employee ID...

[Lee Smith]

I think I'm understanding you correctly?

There are two ways to populate a container field with a photo.

One is to actually put insert the picture, and the other is to insert only a reference to the picture. See your manual or Online Help about the Insert Function for more information. BTW, the choice is a checkbox that appears in the Insert Dialog Box.

HTH

Lee

[Fenton]

There is a 3rd way. Create a calculation field, with the result "Container", that produces the path to the photo, in FileMaker syntax. You will find the syntax at the bottom of the dialog for the file path, in the Insert Picture step. On Windows the result might look like:

imagewin:/D:emp_photo1234.jpg

D: in this case being a mounted mapped drive accessible to everyone; not the drive that FileMaker is on. But that's another topic.

A correct path will show the picture from the file. No Import or Insert needed. The catch is that you must be able to calculate the path from data in the database. But it sounds like you can.

There is some discussion of file paths in the Set Variable area in the FileMaker Help. But I can't find a description of the above technique in FileMaker help. Its discussion of container fields is not really up to speed; and I'm looking at 8.5.

(P.S. There's actually a 4th way now, using the Web Viewer object in FileMaker 8.5, but that's not relevant in this case.)

[StarBuck99]

Hi Fenton,

I now can display the whole path ex: "d:photo_ID1234.jpg" in Photo container field (it just showing the path (NO PICTURE), in order to get the picture I still have to manually goto D:photo_ID and Insert Picture.

Any suggestion how to get it display automatically when browsing each record?

P.S. This is a Employees Photo ID application and all the data are extract from mainframe database down to FileMaker8 that have the same Employee_ID & Employee_Photo. Ex:(Employee_ID=1234 , Employee_Photo = 1234.jpg).

Thanks in advance...

[Fenton]

Well, I don't know what "mainframe" would mean in this case. But if you can Insert, then you should be able to calculate.

To see the path, Insert [x] As reference only (as Lee said). Created another calculation field, GetAsText (container), result "Text." That should have 3 lines in it, with the last being the full path to the file. Your calculation (to show the picture) has to look exactly like that. The result of the calculation has to be "Container."