Cause FileExplorer to populate node from server side

[Robert Colbert]

I am trying to store/retrieve a list of selected items in a file explorer control. I have been able to retrieve the checked nodes and store them without any difficulty but I am running in to a problem when I try to load the list of items back in the the explorer if they reside in nodes that have not been loaded.

Is it possible to trigger the FileExplorer control to pre-load/expand a node path from the server api?

[Dobromir]

Hi Robert,

In order to pre-load a specific sub-folder, you need to set RadFileExplorer's InitialPath property to point to that sub-folder. Please review the following live demo for an example:
FileExplorer / InitialPath and Paging

All the best,
Dobromir
the Telerik team

[Robert Colbert]

The server-side loading would be after the root of the tree had loaded and branches to load might contain multiple entries in different sections of the tree.

ex:

Items to select in FileExplorer:
/branch1/subfolder1/
/branch3/subfolder2/subfolder3/

The root of the tree contains:
/branch1
/branch2
/branch3
/branch4

Can InitialPath be used in the case where I need to pre-load multiple paths?

[Dobromir]

Hi Robert,

In short, no, the InitialPath cannot be used to pre-load multiple folders.

On a side note, I am not quite sure I understand what you are trying to achieve, could you please describe in more details the specific scenario?

Best wishes,
Dobromir
the Telerik team

[Robert Colbert]

The specific scenario is this:

I wrote my own content provider to interact with SharePoint 2010 using the client object model. The explorer is being used to select a list of objects to be used when migrating SharePoint content between server farms with the ability to save the list of selected objects for re-use.

Iterating through the list and selecting the objects works properly as does taking that list and persisting it to a database. I run in to issues trying to load the list back from the database on a fresh load of the FileExplorer. If I had already expanded all paths in FileExplorer before trying to load the selected item list, it works fine. Otherwise FileExplorer only selects the items that were checked at the top level of the list.

[Dobromir]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for the provided detail information.

For this scenario I would suggest you to store selected items in a container on the page (a hidden field, a javascript variable, etc) and handle the RadFileExplorer's ClientFolderChange client-side event and select the file(s) that exist in the container.

Greetings,
Dobromir
the Telerik team