What do you do for scanning from withing Filepro

[Brian K. White]

On 3/23/2017 5:13 PM, Boaz Bezborodko via Filepro-list wrote:
> I'm  looking to scan in files linked to specific Filepro records. This
> is the first time I'm doing any kind of work like this.
>
> What methods do you folks use to accomplish this?
> What software/hardware combinations make it easier?
>
> I was thinking of creating separate documents, saved to specific
> directories, and storing the file names and locations in the record.
> But I don't know what software to use that could trigger the scan and
> specify the file name, directory, etc.
>
> I'm working with Filepro 5.6.10R9 running on Windows7 machines.
>
> Thanks,
> Boaz
>

I feel bad, I think we have a pretty neat scanning system we've been 
using for 15 years by now, but I just have not had *any* time the last 
couple weeks to show it to you. We just instituted all developers using 
git and not working as root. Not exactly a smooth and painless transition ;)

Anyway our scanning process is mostly a cgi that runs in the web server 
on the same server with filepro, and a small client package (we have 
windows and osx versions) that has a commandline scanning util, which is 
run by os registry entries to recognize a custom url, and/or a terminal 
emulator that has a "run-program" escape sequence feature. You don't 
have to use the bundled terminal emulator, several other terminal 
emulators have a similar feature, but the included one is free and open 
source so no serial numbers or anything to worry about. Just click-n-go.

Images are displayed to the user via web browser, and uploaded to the 
server via http-post, or by the user using a drag-n-drop area in the 
browser.

In filepro you just fire off the right url which pops up the browser on 
the client to either display previous scans or allow uploading new ones. 
For more streamlined user process, you can also invoke the 
scan-and-upload directly from filepro in the terminal without popping up 
the browser.

The files are stored on the filesystem in a directory structure that 
simply matches your applications natural filepro file structure. If you 
have an invoice file, and one of the records in the invoice file is 
invoice 236517, then the files for that invoice end up being stored in a 
path like:
/pix/app-or-system-or-customer-name/invoice/23/65/17-###.pdf
where ## is 1 to 100, up to 100 files per customer-doctype-docnumber 
triplex. The "docnumber" (invoice number in this case) is split up into 
2-byte chunks just to keep the filesystem fast by not having a million 
files in any single directory.

(in our case, we have multiple companies or customers using their own 
datasets (qualifiers) in the same application. So to address a document 
uniquely, you need 3 pieces of info, company, doctype (quote, invoice, 
check, etc), docnumber (quote#, invoice#, check#, etc).

The worst part is the cgi ksh script that does all the work is kind of a 
big ugly monster by now after 15 years or so! But, it's still ultimately 
just a ksh script. There are a few other bits and pieces in total but 
it's pretty simple.

You don't do much extra in filepro at all to add document imaging to any 
screen in your app. You mostly just add a gosub to any input table and 
edit 2 values at the top of the gosub for doctype and docnumber to 
whatever makes sense for that screen in your app.

I'd say go to aljex.com and sit in on a sales demo, which will cover the 
scanning, and you can actually use it in the demo system yourself, but I 
don't know how much uninteresting trucking logistics stuff you'd have to 
suffer through to get to the scanning.

The client-side code is not only free but open-source, except the 
windows scanning util is a commercial product we purchased. There are a 
few different similar utils that can be used for that. I do have a very 
crude open source scanning util also, but it it is really really crude. 
It only scans one page at a time, and only outputs a .bmp! There are 
open source graphics libraries that could be added and used to make a 
better scanner util, but I'm not a good enough c or windows developer to 
manage it. The client-side code for osx is 100% open source, including 
the scanning util, though the osx scanning util is simple and doesn't 
work on a lot of scanners. Apparently scanner drivers on osx are not 
consistent at all and many scanners come with their own scanner programs 
and that is the only thing that works with the scanner. But other 
scanners do support a common osx image capture api, and those work. The 
server side, I guess you would have to talk to our owner. I do have a 
crude proof-of-concept server-side script that is shareable which takes 
in a scan and just displays it back. But from there you can modify 
however you want. Even the crude script collects the file and displays 
it. So just add code to that to do something else with the file like 
save it in a directory structure of your choice.

-- 
bkw