We are developing a web based application which provides a repository of users case files. Would like the user to be able to access these from their web browser with full read write capability.
For an earlier generation of our system, which was hosted on a local Linux server with Windows clients we were able to share out a folder and access it with \\server\share_name\file.doc type links. If these type of links were included in web pages (in internet explorer) and clicked on the file opened in MS Word and was savable directly into the shared folder. These type of links however only worked in IE - not FF or Chrome
Moving now to an internet based solution in our next generation of the system, we require similar functionality.
We are toying with the idea of having a WebDAV (or FTP/SFTP) share and mapping a local drive on each client machine to it to provide similar functionality. This though will probably not work well with FF or Chrome with \\server\share_name... type links. We have done brief testing and file:// links do not provide write capability once the file is opened.
As a last resort we will be able to use manual file upload dialogs, but this is not ideal and would entail additional end user training.
Has anyone any similar experience in this field and any possible solutions / best practice.
When you map remote resource as a local drive, for a browser this becomes a local drive. And browsers have only limited access to the local file system. Now when you provide a link to the browser, the browser's default behavior is to download the resource behind the link, and then let the local application process it. The browser just doesn't know how to open the remote resource locally in a different manner.
The solution would be to let the browser download something (some kind of link file) and have some local helper module (external application or browser plugin) open this link file and open the location, specified in this link file, locally. As this would be a client-side helper module, it will be able to interact with the client system and will know how to open the provided link. Given that the virtual drive letter can be different on each system (if you mount the disk to the drive letter), the helper module would need to resolve the link to point to the correct local drive. If you create a hidden virtual drive (our virtual storage products let you do this), then a link would look like "\SomeFancyNameUniqueToYourApp\Path\To\File.ext" and no resolving would be necessary. And most applications handle this type of paths fine.
I don't know for sure, but it's possible that browsers will open Windows .lnk files without a need in helper module, and with hidden virtual drive you could generate an LNK file on the server and have the browser open it locally. But this is just a guess. My bet is that you will need a helper module anyway.
ftp://username:password#hostname/ type links should work, and MS apps are getting better at handling them. still not 100% though
Try SMEStorage.com. They enable you to map local WebDav and FTP servers and access files using a Cloud Drive on Linux, Mac or Windows, and also from mobile devices (iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7). You can get unique file links for each file and also secure file sharing in which the links expire.
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I'm creating an internal bot that's running in Microsoft Teams.
I want it to be able to give people a link to the location of the latest installer of our software.
This link would either be an ftp, windows network, or windows path.
When I try putting any of these locations into the link format (either <link_location> or [link text](link_location), it shows up in Teams looking like a link, but it is not clickable.
Is it possible to do what I'm trying to do?
Links must be https. Network paths and ftp’s are not supported. There are no plans to support them in the future because of the risk of security and phishing attacks.
I have a client who uses Firefox as their primary browser. We have enabled folder redirection for their Desktop and Documents folders via GPO and I was hoping to do the same with their Firefox bookmarks as all users have a desktop and access to a Windows 2008 R2 RDS session for remote access and a few have laptops.
I understand there's 2 ways to do this:
Enabled Firefox sync. My issue with this is it's all user-driven. They have to sign up for it, manage their password, enable it when using on other machines, etc...
Turn on the Appdata\Roaming folder redirection GPO. However, I've read on several different forums that this can cause issues for various applications, most commonly Adobe Reader, so I'd like to avoid it if possible
Does anyone know of another reliable server-side policy to enable syncing of Firefox bookmarks between multiple machines for users in an AD environment?
Thanks for any insight you may have.
You could sync the AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox directory, if that's an option in GPO.
Otherwise, you could place the Firefox profile folder in a directory that gets synchronized (like Documents), instead of in its default location, and then set up Firefox on each computer (using the Profile Manager) so it looks in that directory for its profile.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
is there a possibility to change the Dropbox sync folder (aka "Dropbox location") programmatically on Mac OSX? By programmatically I mean by executing some command line helper tool or by using the Dropbox API.
I've searched around for this quite a long while now, but couldn't find any satisfying answers.
Sym-linking or using an alternative cloud provider (with a possibly better CLI/API) as suggested here are not an option for me.
As I understand the Dropbox API, it is made for accessing the Dropbox Server storage from within one's own application rather than interacting with the "out-of-the-box" Desktop sync client, is this correct?
The solution I am looking for should also work very reliably, so "hacking" the encrypted SQLite dbx files (as suggested here) or an Apple UI script that changes the sync folder via the Dropbox UI Desktop client are also really not an option for me.
For Google Drive I know that doing this is a simple as stopping the sync client, moving the sync folder, changing the sync path in the sync_config.db accordingly and re-starting the Desktop sync app. -- Exactly such a procedure is what I would also be hoping to find for Dropbox :-)
THX for your replies & suggestions!
No, without using the potentially brittle methods you mentioned, I don't believe there's a way to do this programmatically.
Your understanding of the Dropbox API is correct though. Using the API allows you to communicate with the Dropbox servers directly to interact with the account, and not the local desktop client.
Hi How do I delete a local file in my application after copying it to the IsolatedStorage?
I want to delete only the file in local folder. Not in the Isolated Storage. I'm using WP 7.1.
tnks
You don't have write access to the folder where your application is installed. It's therefore impossible to delete the file.
Windows Phone is designed to be one of the most secure environments in the mobile market. If you look at many of the standards it enforces you will see that this is a consistent theme.
For example:
Your app does not have the ability to intercept calls or text
messages (though the library exists)
Your app cannot modify hardware buttons (there is a few MINOR
exceptions to this rule like manipulating the back button event)
Your app cannot access memory locations outside of the Isolated
Storage it is assigned by the phone.
These standards are put in place to protect the user from malicious software and to keep a clean and consistent feel across the environment.
There does not appear to be any good software to mount an FTP to a local drive letter (see here for details SF Question) so I was thinking why not just write it myself, but I have very little experience dealing with windows (at the programming level) so what would be involved in doing something like this? What needs to be done to get a new "drive" listed under "My Computer"? What needs to be done to then get the contents of the FTP (or other remote resource) listed that "drive"?
My initial thought would be you would need to write a shell extension to be able to show your FTP site, and that it would best be shown as a special folder in Windows Explorer. Your extension would ideally be written in a non-managed language that supported COM (C++, VB 6, etc). It would need to respond to events like:
The user highlighting a folder on the server
The user double-clicking on a folder on the server
The user dragging and dropping files to and from the server
The user wanting to disconnect/reconnect from the server
When you intercept these events you would issue the appropriate FTP command to accomplish the task (use LIST to get the contents of a directory, MKD to create a directory, STOR to upload a file, etc). You would have to take the results of these commands and show them in the folders view and the listview within Windows Explorer, and for that you will likely need to get up close and personal with the Win32 API. For that you can turn to books like Charles Petzold's classic Programming Windows. Also check out this tutorial on writing shell extensions.
It sounds like an interesting project.