Pluggable Widgets - Binary attribute

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A while ago I was working on a widget where I need to be able to download the contents of a FileDocument. In the old Custom Widget era this worked fine with the ‘Binary’ attribute, but in Pluggable Widgets land this attribute type is utterly useless… We can still define it, see docs, but the value of this attribute is empty.

 

The ‘Binary’ attribute is useful though, because we can make sure we target a FileDocument object (or Image, as that is also a FileDocument). In its current state it cannot be used though, which is sad.

 

Here’s my proposal for R&D to get useful information in the client API (choose which one is more useful):

 

1.) Return either a FileValue or ImageValue. The only thing we need in order to either download or fetch it, is the ‘uri’ property in either value (which is universal). I know that in the back-end you use ‘mx.data.getImageUrl’ or ‘mx.data.getDocumentUrl’ (but both have not been documented in the client API) to generate these URI’s.

 

2.) Return a somewhat more verbose FileValue back, that contains:

• GUID
  • This gives us the possibility to upload files ourselves using the saveDocument API, which gives us better capabilities finally recreating a Pluggable version of the FileDropper widget...
• isNew (useful to determine if this fileDocument has been committed already)
• type (is this a FileDocument or an Image?)
• size (useful for a variety of reasons, mainly display)

 

Related:

• https://community.mendix.com/link/space/widgets/questions/96117 (3 years ago...)
• https://community.mendix.com/link/space/widgets/questions/100451 (3 years ago...)
  • “File support is planned for this year and we have a dedicated team on the Pluggable Widget API's.” – this was 3 years ago...
• https://community.mendix.com/link/space/app-development/questions/105923 (2 years ago...)

 

 

 

asked 2023-09-29

2 answers