I have a form that is currently in Infopath, which we are trying to change to a web application. This form has an upload control in it where people can save related documents to this form for users to edit and manipulate, which persist to other users.
Currently I am not seeing how to change this to a web application, but I have some ideas. I really just need help determining if my idea would #1 work, and #2 be the best way to handle this.
I was thinking of re-creating the form exactly as it is in Infopath. I thought about using the async uploader to upload the files to a UNC share, and then on the "edit" form template have a repeater that shows a hyperlink to the forms location. Therefore people could manipulate the form, re-save it from their client application (word, excel, etc...), and then other users would see the updates. However I am not sure if this is the best approach. We utilize SQL as our backend, and wouldn't care to upload the document to SQL, but I don't even know if that is possible.
What do you all think, would this way work with shared directories? Would you rather have the user save the "attachments" to the network share, and then have the uploader just record the path so that the repeater can display the links? <- Is that even possible? Any other ideas? I am completely open as my primary job is not programming, but due to the company dynamics I am writing applications to help re-work antiquated systems.
7 Answers, 1 is accepted
I would suggest the following three approaches that you can try:
1) Instead of using a repeater you can implement a RadGrid with a GridAttachmentColumn column as shown in the following demo: Column Types. This is the last column of the bottom grid (ID="RadGrid2").
2) GridTemplateColumn with RadAsyncUpload as it is shown in the Integration with Ajaxified RadGrid demo.
3) The third approach that you may find useful is to use RadEditor in a popup and load the form inside the WYSIWYG editor for editing purposes. Here are some demos that can help:
3.1) PopUp edit mode provided by RadGrid:
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/grid/examples/data-editing/edit-form-types/defaultcs.aspx
3.2) RadWindow:
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/controls/examples/integration/gridandwindow/defaultcs.aspx?product=window
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/window/examples/internalcontent/defaultcs.aspx
I hope that you'll find the ideas useful.
Best Regards,
Rumen
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Rumen,
Thank you for your reply. I don't think option 1 is an option for me because the amount of attachments will vary based on the project this document is for. I.E someone fills out a form for Project1 which has 2 attachments, but Project2 has 10. I wouldn't be able to show all of the attachments in a rad grid unless I have a cap on how many attachments they can have.
This issues would be the same for option number 2.
For option 3 I still don't think it would work because the number of attachments is a variable. Unless I am missing something I don't think I would be able to use those.
Maybe you can help me with another issue I have found with this project. What if I wanted to capture just the file location when using the rad upload? Instead of actually uploading the document I could capture the UNC path of the documents which are stored on a public file share for our company. We could always have the users save the file to a location, then "link" them to the online form by selecting the file where it resides on the company file share. Then I would just have to upload the file locations to a field in SQL with a predefined delimiter. Then I can pull that field and parse it into a list, which I can then use a radgrid to show the list of items with name and file location (based on two different delimiters).
So would it be possible to use the radasync uploader to "catch" the UNC path that the file resides in, and then cancel the actual upload? Is there another control that is better suited to just select the file path?
The purpose of the AsyncUpload is to upload files, but not to get reference to already uploaded files and their paths.
If you want to show and select files you can try RadFileExplorer. You can access the FileExplorer's content provider for UNC paths as follows:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/aspnet-ajax/fileexplorer/details/use-radfileexplorer-with-physical-and-shared-folder-s-paths.
Best regards,
Rumen
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Rumen,
Sure, all of these attachments are documents that are saved to a company share on our file server. The purpose would be for the user to link these files to the form that they fill out on the web application. My thought was that the user could browse for the file, select the file, and the web app would then capture the file location as well as the file name to allow future users to click a link to open that file.
For example lets say a file is stored in \\fileserver\eng\project1\ and the file name is document1.docx. The user would browse to the location, select the file, and the application would record the location of the file as \\fileserver\eng\project1\document1.docx. Then we can add hyperlinks to these documents using the location variable that was gathered in the previous step.
Hopefully this is a little more clear.
The tool that you are looking for is called Document Manager and it is part of the RadEditor dialogs. Its idea is to enlists documents in RadFileExplorer, which can be selected and inserted by the user as link in the editor. You can test the Document manager in the File Managers demo of RadEditor - this is the fifth tool from the left.
If needed you can see how to use this tool as a standalone dialog in the following KB article: Using the Image and Document managers outside RadEditor. You can see how to configure the file explorer to read from UNC storage in this article: http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/aspnet-ajax/fileexplorer/details/use-radfileexplorer-with-physical-and-shared-folder-s-paths.
Best regards,
Rumen
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Rumen,
Thanks again for the reply. I have switched to the document manager and I have everything almost finished, but I cannot get it to show a list of files that is located on my UNC share. I have the viewpath set to "\\server\share" but nothing ever shows up in the manager window. I can see in the pager template that it is 1 page and 11 items, which doesn't match how many items I have in that folder either. Is there something I am missing?
By design, the ViewPaths property can work with virtual paths only.
Your options to load the files inside the Document Manager are:
- Make the UNC share a virtual folder pointing the root of the web application in IIS as explained in the following article: Upload Files to a Shared Drive.
- Or implement a custom file browser content provider as shown in the following KB article: Use RadFileExplorer with physical and shared folder's paths. You can see how to attach a custom provider to RadEditor's File Browser dialogs (Image, Document, Media and other) in this live demo: Custom File Dialog Content Provider.
Regards,
Rumen
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