File

Hi Arthur,

Unfortunately I don’t think what you are after is possible without a severe re-write of the extension. I looked into this quite a while back, well actually I just wanted a way to choose a file but not upload it and just store the file reference, slightly different but on the same sort of lines. I spent months and months trying to figure it out and came up with literally nothing on any internet searches. I usually find at least 10 tutorials with anything I’m searching for but as I found nothing on this I took it that what I wanted to do isn’t possible in that way. Admittedly my situation was a bit different but I think to do what you’re after would require some clever jiggery pokery of the extension and the hook that it is using in the code.

What would be really nice is if someone could come up with a sort of virtual FTP client within a field or something like that so that you can select files on the server just as you would in an FTP client, now that would be awesome.

I did look into the code of the File extension once but that was back at a time when I didn’t know much about coding although I do remember it was quite a beast of an extension and unfortunately my coding skills aren’t exactly the best in the world so I didn’t really know where to look. Hopefully someone else might have an idea though and take the challenge up as I would absolutely love to see something like this within ExpressionEngine.

Sorry that I couldn’t be of any actual help on that but just to say that I think it’s going to need some definite custom coding to realise what we would all like.

Best wishes,

Mark

@Mark and @Arthur — You should definitely have a look at Moxiecode’s File Manager and/or Image Manager plugin for TinyMCE. It requires a slightly different workflow when adding files / pictures, but you could definitely achieve what you’re looking for with that, without any coding.

Sorry but they’re definitely not for me. I’m not a big fan of WYSIWYG managers. Tried all of them before but they’re just not me I’m afraid. Not too sure why but I just don’t like them. Might be good for Arthur though.

Best wishes,

Mark

I understand Mark, but I did not refer to their WYSIWYG functionality, but more to this:

What would be really nice is if someone could come up with a sort of virtual FTP client within a field or something like that so that you can select files on the server just as you would in an FTP client, now that would be awesome.

You would not have to code this as both, File- and Image Manager offer excellent functionality in this area.

Yep sorry didn’t meant to say WYSIWYG but just that for some reason I don’t like those solutions. I can’t explain it as I don’t know the answer ; -) but sufficed to say they’re not for me I’m afraid :-( Could well be very good for others but not me I’m afraid.

A complete stick in the mud me!! 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

Well, it’s ok. Seems that I won’t convince you, but then again I guess you end up having no solution at all, instead of being able to nicely link already uploaded files or even upload new ones 😊

Well, it’s ok. Seems that I won’t convince you,

Nope I’m a stubborn bee me! 😉

…but then again I guess you end up having no solution at all, instead of being able to nicely link already uploaded files or even upload new ones 😊

Well actually I do have quite a few solutions that I use due to naming conventions a lot of the time I don’t even have to place even the name of a file into any fields anywhere, I just upload them to the FTP site and the entry does the rest for me 😉

I’m sure you do, and yet you wish for a different solution as you mentioned. I just outlined a possible way of doing it, without you having to wait for anyone else coding it. But now, back to on-topic 😉

Nope… not for me either. As I read about those programs it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t what I was needing. The EE File plugin really works great… except for that one little detail. It’s not a detail that I’m willing to “fight” for, however. I can personally live with the limitation. I just felt it would be nice if instead of uploading a duplicate file that I could use the existing file. But, my needs are not that great or extensive. If it can’t be done,… well, it can’t be done.

I’ve had MH File 3.1.1 working on my development site fine, then transferred to to a new VPS server, reconnected db, et al, but the one thing that is acting weird is a single custom field in one of my weblogs. Full background can be found in my EE thread here.

Basically, weblog ‘personnel-profile’ had 4 MH File custom fields:

1 bio pic ({attorney-pic}) 1 pdf upload 1 vCard upload 1 pic for shareholder listing ({shareholder-pic})

The first 3 transferred perfectly. Adopted new system path when upload location preferences were updated to new server info. See them working here.

However, the ‘shareholder-pic’ custom field kept outputting the old url/dir path. It is being called on the homepage:

I thought this could be because it was sharing the same upload directory as the ‘attorney-pic’ file type. So I created a new directory only for ‘shareholder-pic’ custom fields. Uploaded new file. Still output the old url/dir path.

So I deleted the custom field ‘shareholder-pic’ in my personnel-profile weblog. Created new custom field and pointed to its newly created upload directory. Uploaded new picture. Still output the old url/dir path.

I thought it could be due to using the same name as old custom field - ‘shareholder-pic’. Renamed custom field to ‘share-pic’ and uploaded new image again. Now just prints custom field name in HTML instead of doing any EE magic:

<div id="portrait">
    {share-pic}
</div>

Any ideas why this could be happening? Why to one File custom field and not all 4? Options or ideas? Sorry for the long post - I’m getting desperate as this is the 1 thing holding us back from launching.

Well, it’s ok. Seems that I won’t convince you, but then again I guess you end up having no solution at all, instead of being able to nicely link already uploaded files or even upload new ones 😊

Hi pesche, maybe you convince me? I both have moxiecodes image and file manager. and the LG extensions… could you please specify your workflow. how to upload 1 to x images? and display them in a loop… I would really appreciate this!

cheers stefan

Wow, long thread! Ok, so i’m pulling my hair out with this one. I’ve currently got this File extension working on an SAEF - allowing user to submit multiple photos. The problem is, I would like that same (logged in) user to be able to delete those photos. Can someone point me to if / how this is possible?

Has anyone figured out a fix to the issue of getting a blank screen when you click publish? The image is uploaded but it is not resized. No thumbnails created. The blank screen happens when I have the max width / height values filled in. I need the anchor to width option to work. I’m using the newest version of the extension with EE 1.6.7

Also, the max bytes setting doesn’t work either. It lets me upload images larger than the max bytes.

Looking back a few pages in this thread, it seems there’s plenty of bugs, is there a running bug fixed version the community has been working on that I can download?

My File (3.1.1) doesn’t seem to be generating thumbnails. It just creates a file with _thumb added to it and it’s the same dimensions with less quality and a larger file size. I need to be able to set thumbnail preferences somewhere as well.

Thanks