Navgigate to a Folder

[vseiber]

Hey all,

Is there a way to insert a "folder" or display the contects of a folder on my local drive into FileMaker instead of a "file" so that I can navigate through it. This way when files are added to the folder they will kind of automatically update in filemaker?

I am completely new to FileMaker so please understandy my naivety. If there is a way to do this or something similar and you can send me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

Vincent Seiber

[Tori Mitchell]

Short answer: Yes, it's possible to replicate this kind of behavior... but it's really hard.

Longish Answer: It's *possible* to create a systems that will monitor a folder and update the database listing of the things in that folder. Problem is, this is a *very* hard thing to do without a ton of hacks all over the place. Honestly, I'd steer clear of this kind of task 'till you're ready to tackle things outside the FileMaker environment in your scripting.

[vseiber]

Thanks for the reply,

At least I know that it may be ultimately possible, but just barely knowing the basics at least I know this is outside the realm of what I am capable of doing for now (and not just a simple function that I am overlooking)

[Fenton]

No, there is no native FileMaker function to view the files in a folder. It is not terribly difficult to do, using a (free) plug-in and command line. I'm fairly familiar with the Mac side of this, less so with Windows. The basic command is:

Windows: dir

Mac: ls

One free plug-in for Windows is the Abstrakt Shell plug-in. It's rather old, and no longer supported (AFAIK), but it works in Windows XP. A newer plug-in is the Spider plug-in, from fmwebschool. But I don't know how to direct you to where/how to download it, other than this link: http://fmwebschool.com/resources/SpiderShell/SpiderShell.html

So, no, as Mike says, it's not really for beginners. But it is not rocket science either.* The plain command will bring a list of files into a single text field in FileMaker. But then you'd need to be able to parse a line, to do anything with it.

I have an example file for Mac, but none for Windows, as yet anyway.

*What do rocket scientists say? "It's only rocket science"?