What do you do for scanning from withing Filepro

Wed Mar 29 11:08:00 PDT 2017

Brian, thanks for the explanation. How do the server and the client-side 
piece communicate, when no terminal emulator is involved? A socket?

And how does the server know what the client's IP address is? Will this 
all fail if Network Address Translation sits between client and server?

On Wed, 29 Mar 2017, Brian K. White via Filepro-list wrote:

> 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
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Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

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