Saving PDFs Directly to a SC

[Shaun Hutchinson]

Good day!

I've been using SC for a little while now, and loving the versatility. One thing that I've come across, that I'd like to do is give my people the ability to save their PDFs directly to the Super Container field. The obvious choice is to use the path over the local network in the Output File dialog, however...I'd like to know if there's a way to use the public web address instead.

The reasoning is two-fold:

1. The people in my office won't always bother to connect to the FileMaker server where the files are stored, and the script will fail.

2. Our database is accessed by people outside of the network and I'd like them to also be able to save PDF's directly to the Supercontainer field.

For example, using a webview, an employee can track a package and get the proof of signature from Fedex. I'd like them to be able to then press a button that would print and save that PDF directly to a SC field.

Thank you!

Shaun

[Smef]

I generally advise against accessing, uploading, and downloading files to SuperContainer outside of the provided interfaces for doing so (filemaker, the plugin, the applet/browser, and the php api). The reason for this is that you can run into permissions issues, calculation problems, and de-synching of filemaker data. You should consider your files stored in supercontainer like you would files stored in a regular container field and only access them through a scripted, programmed interface (filemaker, web publishing, etc). It's definitely possible to do what you're talking about, but it's very easy for something to go wrong and cause many problems in your database and permissions and I recommend finding another way to do that.

You can definitely use your external IP address for SuperContainer so that people outside of your network can access it, but without filemaker (or some other application) making your calculations for you your users won't know where to put the files so that other people can access them. It's fine for users to upload files through the browser in the java applet without filemaker, but they may not know what URLs to use without filemaker doing the calculations for them, making your files easily lost. It's entirely possible to make your own non-filemaker application which uses supercontainer, such as a browser-based solution.

The example that you give is possible to do in filemaker using the save as pdf script step and the companion plugin to script the upload of files up to supercontainer, so you wouldn't need to develop anything extra outside of your filemaker database for them to be able to do that.

If you would like a hand with any of this 360Works is availble to do custom development for you in your database. Our rate is $165/hour. We can get you a quote for your project if you would like to give us a call, and we will take a look at your system.

[Shaun Hutchinson]

David,

Thank you for the help. I'll look into using the Companion plugin and will keep you in mind if we need custom work for this.

Best,

Shaun

I generally advise against accessing, uploading, and downloading files to SuperContainer outside of the provided interfaces for doing so (filemaker, the plugin, the applet/browser, and the php api). The reason for this is that you can run into permissions issues, calculation problems, and de-synching of filemaker data. You should consider your files stored in supercontainer like you would files stored in a regular container field and only access them through a scripted, programmed interface (filemaker, web publishing, etc). It's definitely possible to do what you're talking about, but it's very easy for something to go wrong and cause many problems in your database and permissions and I recommend finding another way to do that.

You can definitely use your external IP address for SuperContainer so that people outside of your network can access it, but without filemaker (or some other application) making your calculations for you your users won't know where to put the files so that other people can access them. It's fine for users to upload files through the browser in the java applet without filemaker, but they may not know what URLs to use without filemaker doing the calculations for them, making your files easily lost. It's entirely possible to make your own non-filemaker application which uses supercontainer, such as a browser-based solution.

The example that you give is possible to do in filemaker using the save as pdf script step and the companion plugin to script the upload of files up to supercontainer, so you wouldn't need to develop anything extra outside of your filemaker database for them to be able to do that.

If you would like a hand with any of this 360Works is availble to do custom development for you in your database. Our rate is $165/hour. We can get you a quote for your project if you would like to give us a call, and we will take a look at your system.