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Create error message if no files selected

ela

Hi,
I've got a submit workflow which works quite fine, but now and then there are authors who forget to select the relevant files before submition. This results in all the files in the directory getting submitted/deployed, which is not desired! Any suggestions on how to solve this? I need a kind of validation, which comes up with an error message if no files have been selected.

Kind regards,
Eldbjørg

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Migrateduser

One way to do this would be to add an input validator to one of your TAG_info variables:

valid_input => 'file_validator()',
error_msg => 'Please select your file(s) before submitting',

and define the file_validator() subroutine to check your iw_file array and make sure elements exist. Then if that fails the error_msg will print and they will be forced to pick some files.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

ela

Thanks Dave!
I'll try knitting it together, but if somebody has more details, feel free!:-)

jbonifaci

Smitty,

I believe ela is referring to the functionality in TeamSite where if you do a submit without selecting any files, TeamSite selects every modified file in your current directory and sub directories and sends those to the submit workflow as if the user had selected them.

jbonifaci

Ela,

I'm not really sure of a good way to get around this. How do you know that the user didn't select all of those files intentionally?

One workaround I can think of is to limit the number of files a user can submit at once. So if you limit it to 1, you check to see if there is only 1 submitted file and then error out if not. If you set the limit to 10 files, you would check to see if the number of submitted files is between 1 and 10 and error out if not.

If you decide the above is a valid option and would like more information about how to do this, let me know and I can help you out with some code.

Jeff Bonifaci

Migrateduser

Oh, well then that has absolutely nothing to do with workflow then. He should have posted in the TeamSite Forum.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

ela

Hi Jeff, and thanks for your reply!

I'm 100% sure they didn't select the files intentionally, as there are more authors sharing the same directory and who have got a system for keeping their files apart, by giving them special names. I saw from the logs that all the modified files in that directory had been published, and now I've got reactions from the other authors. They've got a manual where it says they have to choose one file and then hit the submit button, but one might forget or miss the checkbox!;-)

Your approach is exactly what I want to do, so if you can provide some code, I would be very happy!!

Kind regards,
Eldbjørg

ela

Hi Dave,
I'm sorry if I confused somebody, but in my opinion it was a workflow thing, since it's part of the workflow "author_submit_deploy", which I've customized, but you're probably right, that technically it belongs somewhere else. Not always easy to know.

Anyway, thanks for taking time to answering me, it's really appreciated!

Kind regards,
Eldbjørg (woman:-)

johnjamesmarsh

Hi,

I did something similar by changing the default submit workflow to only include files owned by the current user.

sub submit_files_xml
{
my $xml = '';

if (__ELEM__('iw_file') != 0)
{
$xml .= "<files>\n";
for (my $i=0; $i < @submit_file; ++$i)
{
my $lockusername = `$iwhome/bin/iwattrib $iw_workarea/$submit_file[$i] lastuser`;
chomp($lockusername);
if ($lockusername eq $user) {
$xml .= " <file path='$submit_file[$i]' comment='__TAG__(File_comment_$i);'/>\n";
}
}
$xml .= " </files>\n";
}

return $xml;
}

Don't know if that will do what you want.

Regards

John

PS. I hate the way the indentation gets lost on these posts.

Edited by johnjamesmarsh on 07/24/03 02:41 AM (server time).

ela

Thanks John,
but I would really like the user to be forced to select a file, since there might be files which are not yet ready for deployment. There are also cases, where a user needs to deploy something for another user.

However, thanks for your tip!

This is what I've got in my submit workflow at the moment:

# make sure the file list is defined
my @submit_file = ();
if (__ELEM__('iw_file'))
{
@submit_file = map { TeamSite::CGI_lite::escape_html_data($_);
} sort __VALUE__('iw_file');
}

This is what's in my start task:

<template_script><![CDATA[
if (@submit_file != 0)
{
__INSERT__("<files>\n");
for (my $i=0; $i < @submit_file; ++$i)
{
__INSERT__("
<file path='$submit_file[$i]' " .
"comment='__TAG__(File_comment_$i);'/>");
}
__INSERT__("</files>\n");
}

]]></template_script>

I just don't know how to check if a file is selected or not, as I'm using standard submit functionality.

Eldbjørg

jbonifaci

Ela,

What I meant was, how do you know, programmatically, that they didn't mean to submit them all? Anyway, here we go.

The following code assumes you have all of the files that were submitted in @submit_file. Just insert it, or something similar, into your wft and you should be good to go. Based on $maxFiles it will insert a TAG with a hidden input with a value of either '1' (if the number of files in @submit_file is less than or equal to $maxFiles) or '0' (if the number of files in @submit_file is greater than $maxFiles). And since the TAG is_required, the user will only be able to submit when the hidden value is 1 (the number of submitted files is less than or equal to the max). It also returns an error message, which I would usually include in the html for the first tag on the page, so it is easy for the user to see what went wrong.

my $maxFiles = 10;
my ($maxFileValue, $maxFileError) = getMaxFileHtml($maxFiles);

TAG_info(
iw_max_files =>
[ html => "$maxFileValue",
error_msg => 'You may only submit $maxFiles file(s) at a time.',
is_required => 'true',
],
);

sub getMaxFileHtml
{
my ($max) = @_;
my $value = "<input type='hidden' value='1'/>";
my $error = "";

if ($#submit_file >= $max)
{
$value =~ s/1//sg;
$error = "<font color='ff0000'>You may only submit $max file(s) at a time.</font><br><br>";
}

return($value, $error);
}

Hope this helps,
Jeff Bonifaci

rollo

This is quick and dirty, but it does work. It uses the good old trick of jamming inappropriate code into predefined areas, in this case the title and html_body_options parameters in CGI_info.

It does assume that your instantiator window does the same thing as mine, which is to add a hidden field named iw_file for each file that is attached to the workflow, and to omit that field if no files are attached. The only real problem is that you end up with two <title> tags - ugly, but not critical.

CGI_info(
title => "My Workflow Name</title>\n<script language=\"JavaScript\">\nfunction checkforfiles() {\n if(!top.iwwft_instantiator.iw_file) {\n alert('You must attach at least one file')\n window.close();\n }\n}\n</script>\n<title>",
html_body_options => "onLoad='checkforfiles();'",
);

It's in the attachment too.

The result is that if the user starts the job with no files attached, an alert pops up and upon hitting 'okay' the instantiator window closes.

Hope that's of some help.

Phil

ela

Hi Jeff,
thanks, it almost works! Suppose I just have to add some makeup, but for the rest it's exactly what I was looking for.

Eldbjørg

Edited by ela on 07/25/03 05:01 AM (server time).

ela

Hello Phil, and thanks for replying as well! However, I couldn't get your script to work. Where exactly should I paste it in my workflow? Is it a separate thing, or must I add it to another component/tag?

Eldbjørg

rollo

It uses the CGI_info directive, which goes in the wft file next to the TAG_info directive. So theoretically you could download the attachment, copy it all, drop it into the wft file above your 'TAG_info' statement and off you go. I did find that the JavaScript it creates doesn't seem to work in Netscape 7 though.

But Jeff's solution was much less 'hacky' than mine anyway Smiley Happy

Phil

ela

Yeah, now I've got Jeff's solution working. Is this trophy sufficient payment? Smiley Happy

Here's the code I ended up with, which perhaps isn't the most elegant solution, but at least sufficient for now:

my ($maxFileValue) = getMaxFileHtml;

TAG_info(
iw_file =>
[ html => "<font size='3'>Here I've got some information on what to do, like please select a file before submition...</font>",
label => "<font color='ff0000'>Error</font>",
],
iw_max_files =>
[ html => $maxFileValue,
valid_input => '1',
is_required => 'true',
],
);

sub getMaxFileHtml
{
my $max = @_;
my $value = "<input type='hidden' value='1'/>";

if ($#submit_file >= $max)
{
$value =~ s/1/0/sg;
}

return($value);
}

Cheers,
Ela

jbonifaci

Just a note, the other examples that people posted that are checking for the number of files the user selects will only work for non-submit workflows. You have no way of telling from a submit workflow if the files attached are what the user selected or what teamsite selected for them because they selected none.

rollo

Yep, true enough. I guess I should've read the question before writing the answer, eh..