Is it possible to store the external path to a file rather than the file itself in such a way that the referenced file can still be accessed from within the database and opened or viewed? -Thanks
Hi HG2S,
a column of typ ‘local file path’ does not exist at this point. Sorry! Also: I doubt it will ever exist. It would only work across machines if the files were stored in an identical file tree - which would be very hard to achieve.
What will be available though in the not-to-far-away-future is a URL column type. This is relevant because you could use that to store a link to a file (i.e., an internal link generated from Seafile or any other file sharing solution that you may use).
Is this what you were looking for?
Yes, I think you get the idea exactly. A field (column type) for URLs would be very useful.
Another thing, would it possible to change the file column type to accept a link or URL to a file rather than the file itself? Does that make sense?
Thanks for your help and insight.
The column type URL is on the development plan for 1.4. So it is not tomorrow (we are currently on 1.2.2), but not far off either.
Not sure I understand what you mean about the change of type of the file column. It sounds like you want to modify a file column in a way that it can only store links to files. This would not make sense, because then you should use a URL column to begin with.
Or do you mean that the file column should be capable of storing either files or links to files? This would make more sense. Yet, I don’t see this development coming any time soon.
Yes, exactly. It would be nice to have the option of storing the file or a link to the file.
Is there a development timeline available for SeaTable?
-Thanks
I would say what you seek to do is already possible.
When you click in a cell in an image column, you have a choice: Upload a local image or provide a link to an image. A file added to an image cell is treated just like any other image. This should get you pretty far!
Here but one example: The second picture (mountain) in the screenshot below is from the wikipedia page on mountains. I added it via “Image Link”. When you right click on it and select “open image”, it opens the image from its source (see second screenshot).
There is only one caveat: The image links have to be general web resources. I tried to add a picture via a public dropbox sharing link. SeaTable does not accept it, because the dropbox link it not actually a link to an image file, but to a website that displays the image.
This is really great news! Do you think it can be extended to work with PDFs, audio files and - I hesitate to add - Word, Excel, and video files?
Thanks very much for this update.
The image column will not be extended to work with PDFs, audio files, … This wouldn’t be sensible.
What you seem to be keen on is a more flexible column of type file - which exists. The restriction is though that the file column can only handle local files at this point (see screenshot below) .
I could image that the image column will be extended in a similar fashion as the image column in the not so-far-away future. But there are no concrete plans.
Sorry, I’m not being clear. I meant to extend the idea not the image column itself. In any event from what you say the suggestion to add the feature might be considered at some time in the future which is good.
By the way, can you explain why there is a picture column type and a files type? Why not one field type to hold all these kinds of objects? Is there a technical reason or a use case that prevents this?
-Thanks
