DCR and Extended Attributes

I am creating dcr's that have other files (images) attached to them. One of the fields on the dct is the path and name of the image file (which resides in the work area). I know that I need to set the EA for the dcr by using the iwetattr command line tool to "attach" these files to the dcr. But when I gnerate the xml output file that will be submitted, how is the EA used to carry along the image file and subsequently to deploy the xml output file and the associated image file?

Any help, even pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreaciated.

Craig

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nipper

I am creating dcr's that have other files (images) attached to them. One of the fields on the dct is the path and name of the image file (which resides in the work area). I know that I need to set the EA for the dcr by using the iwetattr command line tool to "attach" these files to the dcr. But when I gnerate the xml output file that will be submitted, how is the EA used to carry along the image file and subsequently to deploy the xml output file and the associated image file?

Any help, even pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreaciated.

Craig

Sounds like you got part of a solution from someone but not the complete solution.

So you are attaching to DCR foo an ea like image/0/path, image/1/path, image/2/path (assuming there are 3 images attached to this DCR).

The piece you are missing is, in your workflow, an external task that reads the ea, grabs the path and then attaches that file to the specific task.

If you need more detail then you need to show the ea attached to the dcr and describe the workflow in use. If you have an external task alread (before the submit) then it is easy, otherwise you will need to run it in the preprocessor (which will slow the user down)

Andy

Adam Stoller

I am creating dcr's that have other files (images) attached to them. One of the fields on the dct is the path and name of the image file (which resides in the work area). I know that I need to set the EA for the dcr by using the iwetattr command line tool to "attach" these files to the dcr. But when I gnerate the xml output file that will be submitted, how is the EA used to carry along the image file and subsequently to deploy the xml output file and the associated image file?

Any help, even pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreaciated.

Craig

As nipper indicated, it sounds like a partially thought out design. If you have the paths referenced within the DCR (as separate fields), then you don't need them also referenced as EAs on the DCR (though there might be value in so doing).

If you are going to use the EA approach, then nipper's response provides the additional insight I think you need. If you are just going to use the embedded references as they are, then it's a similar approach but instead of running iwextattr to retrieve the paths from the EAs to attach to your workflow, you parse the DCR (with any number of possible XML parsing modules) and use that information to attach the referenced files to your workflow. This is, of course assuming that when you start the workflow with a generated output file that you have the standard EAs on the output file that can lead you back to the DCR, from which you can extract the embedded path references.

Either approach is fine - you just need to choose one and follow it through to completion though.