is there a way to save, not save as, from an online flex app onto someone's local machine? Basically, if a user opens a file local to their machine in an online flex app, is there a way to allow them to save it locally without going through dialog boxes and picking file names?
Note: I've read that this is possible on Air, but seems unlikely in Flex - my hope is that some workaround may exist...
thx!
f
No. For security reasons, the online application does not have access to the user's harddrive. This is why the "save as" functionality has been added. It allows the user to choose to save a file.
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My Xamarin forms app required the user to perform a certain amount of configuration before it can be used. Additionally, the app can be run on multiple computers by the same user (There are valid business reasons for doing this.) What I would like to be able to do is backup the configuration of the app to a file that can then be used on another device to automatically configure the app on the new device in exactly the same way. This will prevent the users from re-entering all the configuration information on each device where they wish to run the app.
Something to keep in mind:
It needs to work on all supported Xamarin Forms platforms - UWP, Android, iOS and Mac.
The app itself does not required the device to have a network connection.
The file needs to be savable in a place where the user can access / copy it to another device (i.e. a USB drive, a network share etc.)
What I have tried:
I have tried using the FilePicker plug in but could not get it to save to anywhere outside the application. (A user trying to find the folder here would not be easy.) Saving anyplace else I received an Access Denied error.
I have tried using the System.IO namespace but encountered the same Access Denied error when saving the file to a someplace outside the application.
I guess my last resort would be to display the configuration information in a XF editor control or such or just copy it to the clipboard (if possible) and have the user manually save the data to a file outside of the application. Does anyone have any other suggestions on how this can be handled?
So after trying multiple things and looking at possible solutions, I could not find a way to easily do this. Instead I used the Xamarin Essentials clipboard function and copied the contents of the file into the clipboard. I then display a message to the user telling them to past the clipboard contents into a file. This seemed to be the best I could do for now.
Before I attempt to program the following function myself, I wonder if something already exists.
What I would like to do is click an edit link on my website for a given document, and have that document launch in the native editor on my local machine (via a temporary file mechanism).
When I save the document in the native editor, the document is HTTP PUT back to the website. This can be accomplished by watching the file for writes, or watching the editor process for exit.
This way I can more easily edit documents on the web (instead of going through the download / edit / upload cycle).
My design would work as follows:
Register .webedit files on the local machine.
When a .webedit file is downloaded, launch webedit.exe with the file.
The file contains a URL (http://server/document) which is checked against a security database to ensure we're only opening allowed URLs.
The URL is downloaded to a temporary location.
The temporary file is launched in the native editor.
The file is watched for changes, and uploaded (HTTP PUT) on change detection (or when the editor is closed, if it's not a single-instance multiple-document editor).
Lots of FTP / SCP GUIs have this type of functionality, but I have not been able to find it for the web in general, or a shared library that allows you to plug in to this function.
Has anyone seen a program that does this?
SharePoint works like this.
It's great for managing shared documents in corporate environments.
Users can even checkout/checkin documents & the features are very extensible..you can customize pretty much anything if you know how.
Edit:
Since you're on Linux..i've heard that Alfreco is a great alternative.
I've never used it, but I know a couple organizations using it instead of SharePoint.
It integrates with Microsoft Office as well.
Also, it will definitely be cheaper.
I'm building an app in ASP.NET that will store some pictures of objects. The pictures will be uploaded by suppliers and downloaded by subscribers. In between, they will have to be edited before becoming available to subscribers.
The editing involves creating a cropping path tightly around the object in the picture, in which some advanced desktop image software will have to be used I suppose.
My problem is in exchanging pictures between my ASP.NET app and the desktop software in a manner that is easy and transparent for the user.
I've done some thinking and I've come up with:
- Manually downloading and uploading the image (Not much user friendly...)
- An image editing program that can upload to a web service (Haven't found yet...)
- Develop a plug-in for an image editing program (Too advanced...)
I'd appreciate any suggestions you may have, thank you!
It sounds like you need some automation to move files between the web server and a file share. I am assuming that the number of images that need to be processed is pretty large, because if it's not, then the overhead of downloading/re-uploading each would not be that much.
So do the following:
1) Create an API for your web app that lists files that are available, or new files since some date/time, or files that have been marked as "new". The API should probably also allow marking a status on them (so you can tell it when you've finishing pulling something down, and it won't be offered again) if you don't want to trust date/time as an indicator of it being new.
2) Write an app (non-web) that runs on a schedule and uses this API to automatically download files to a shared filesystem area in your local network, and marks them as "downloaded"
The app should also monitor these files (the ones it downloaded & saved to your local share) for changes, and if changed, upload them back to your web app. To do this you may need to keep a database of filenames and modification dates/times.
This shouldn't be too hard to write in whatever language you are using for your web (assume c# or vb). By "API" I just mean, a web page that provides a list in a standardized format (e.g. json) that you can parse with your automation application, and another page that allows posting the file back for re-upload.
I'm assuming that the web server is not your own, or generally, you can't simply have it save the file uploads directly to some area where your image editors can access them. Otherwise you could just do that.
Meanwhile I came out with another possible solution.
I'm thinking of having our own windows app on the editor's computers. This app will be associated with a custom extension. When an editor downloads a file (with this extension) for editing, it will be opened in our application which in turn will open the image in some editor program.
This app will be monitoring the files for changes, and in such case, it will upload these images.
Any thoughts on this?
I looked around, and the latest reference I saw was from 2008 stating that the standard FileReference browser does not support retrieving the user's file's absolute local path unless it's an AIR app, and indeed there's nothing in the docs suggesting otherwise. The reasoning behind this is apparently some misguided security concern... I get it's not a great idea to let any Flash app know your directory structure, but if the user actually grants your app a file, I think it doesn't invalidate the security model to know just that file's absolute path.
I'm wondering if the state of things has changed at all with Flex 4 and there's a method of getting the local filename of anything. I need it because I'm making an application that when distributed runs locally in 99% of cases, so doing a full file upload just to save it somewhere else on the local machine seems silly. (Plus the standard file uploading method doesn't support SOAP, which is what I'm using for all my other services...) I can always just have the user type in their local path name, but that seems really stupid.
Due to security reasons, in Flash (not AIR) you are not allowed to see the full path of a fileReference File.
It depends on what you are trying to achieve - it's not exactly clear what you're trying to do.
"doing a full file upload just to save it somewhere else on the local machine seems silly"
Since flash player 10 you can save directly to the local filesystem without going through a remote server. You just have to invoke the FileReference.download() function in response to a user guesture like a mouse click or key press (e.g. pressing a save button).
FileReference documentation:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/net/FileReference.html#download%28%29
Otherwise, no, you are not able to get the full path to a file as it can be a security risk - even if they do select the file themselves.
For example if I select a file on the desktop of a Windows machine I don't really want some random web application knowing my username:
"C:\Documents and Settings\ [user name] \Desktop\myAwesomeFile.txt"
and from that you can take a guess at the version of windows I'm running.
If you need greater interaction with a user's desktop then you should use AIR - that is it's reason for existing.
I am creating an AIR application using Flex. In it I use a file in application directory to store some data in it.Its working very well to read and write data to this file with various OS except windows 7. In windows 7 it is not working. May be its a permission problem.
How can i write file in the application directory with Windows 7 ?
Thanks
Arif
Have you tried using the user directory instead of the application directory to store data?
Instead of applicationDirectory use applicationStorageDirctory. Your app should always have access to write tot he latter.
Is User Account Control active on the system? Air may not be triggering a UAC prompt properly, but if it is on, depending on the access restrictions, you will need to have the user ok any changes to the Program Files folder(s).
Edit
Turns out you never have the ability to write to the path associated with File.applicationDirectory, at least as far as the documentation is concerned.