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Get File Contents with Dialog |
Shows the user a file selection dialog, the contents of the selected file is returned.
Syntax
Get File Contents with Dialog [ Select ; Result ; Prompt ; Initial folder ;
Encoding ;
Convert to FileMaker line endings ]
Options
| Select entire contents | replaces the contents of a field with the result. If not checked the result replaces the currently selected portion of the field |
| Result | the characters of the file the user selected. If the user pressed cancel an error code "$$-1" is returned |
| Prompt | (optional) adds a prompt text to the dialog. It may be left empty |
| Initial folder | (optional) the path to the folder where the dialog initially starts |
| Encoding | the desired character encoding, like UTF-8 |
| Convert to FileMaker line endings | this will convert any line breaks in the data to the line break FileMaker expects: CRLF, LF and CR will all become CR |
Returned Result
Data type returned
Text
Result
The characters of the file the user selected. If the user pressed cancel an error code “$$-1” is returned.
Originated in
Troi File Plug-in 9.0
Compatibility
FileMaker Pro 17 to FileMaker Pro 21 (2024)
Considerations
You can read up to 2 Gb into a field. However more than 500000 characters will slow down FileMaker considerably.
Only use “Convert to FileMaker Line endings” for getting text files, as it might change the data returned. If for example you use it with an image file the imported image might get corrupted.
On Mac the dialog will filter and show only text files by default. To change the default filtering use the TrFile_SetDefaultType function, or take a look at “Filtering Files” in the example databases.
Example
Get File Contents with Dialog [ Select ; $Result ;
"Please select the text file you want to use:" ; "D:\DataFiles\" ]You can also use a calculation for the prompt, for example this one which uses a global text field:
Get File Contents with Dialog [ Select ; $Result ;
"Please select the Excel file \"" & gFileName & "\"":" ]This will result in a file selection dialog with this prompt text:
‘Please select the Excel file “invoices99.xls”:’.
Related script step
| Show Select File Dialog |
Related functions
| TrFile_ContentsDialog |
| TrFile_GetContents |
Related topics
Troi File Plug-in online help (overview)
