“Fuzzy”/Partial Match Intranet Links to Files?

RapidWeaver General
#1

Hello,

I’m setting up a company intranet and planning to add links to various commonly used documents.

The documents always start with the same name but the ending will change as documents are revised ie “DOC-1234 Rev 1” will be updated to “DOC-1234 Rev2”.

Is there a way to have, at best I can describe as a fuzzy link, that will only match the first x characters of a file, so if the Filename is updated (the start is unchanged) you don’t have to update the link to exactly match the filename?

Cheers,
Paul

#2

Probably a job for PHP and Regex (regular expressions):

No addon I can think of that can do this for RapidWeaver. Something that would need to be custom coded I think. I sometimes need to do this type of thing in my day job for weather charts and satellite imagery that are named sequentially.

The other option is that if the location of the file never changes (only its name changes) you could use PHP to look at the target folder, extract the name of the file in there, and then construct the download link for it. That way, it’s always updated on the webpage.

1 Like
#3

Maybe Paperless would work for that?
I work with a site where PDF’s are always changing and Paperless works great.
http://www.ibize.com/timberline/Plans/

1 Like
#4

Thanks @willwood, looks like the sort of thing I was hoping to do. I didn’t think there’s be a stack for it but I’m trying to learn php etc. so this is an ideal real world problem to solve.

Thanks also @joemart1951 Paperless is interesting but I’m also looking to point to folders etc. so might not work for that.

#5

Not sure what you mean by “point to folders”. Do you mean folders of materials folks can download? Easiest way to do that is a Zip file.

Paperless and Repository are both great. You can link to a folder and voila … whatever is in there is in there: version 2, 200, or 453. You can download the whole folder easily or individual items.

Presumably if you are putting different versions up you want to upload the newest version and delete the older version. (Unless, for some reason, you want to keep a history of versions available.)

Maybe learning PHP is the way to go … but my spidey-senses tell me you may be making this more complicated than it needs to be.

#6

In paperless you do point to folders.

#7

Thanks @Mathew, perhaps I need to explain things a bit more.
This is for a workplace intranet, rather than an external site. The main purpose of the site is to signpost links to different file or folders on the internal shared network. As different projects have developed some things have ended up being a bit scattered across the drive rather than fully organised. People are used to where things are/organised and trying to reorganise is not a good option at the moment.

Some of the files are part of an internal controlled document system. In this case the document will always have the same ID but the revision number, at the end of the file name, will change when documents are updated. The most recent file is always kept in the folder, and the previous revision is archived. This is why I’m looking to point to a specific folder and the initial part of the file name, so I don’t have to update absolute links all the time.

Hope that explains things a bit more clearly.

#8

@pmjd Paul: that helps a little bit. So is the problem that the folder where the file resides also contains a lot of other files? Or only that one file and perhaps 3 to 5 other ones?

#9

Some folders contain a few, others contain a few hundred files.

#10

Ugh! Okay that’s a big problem when there’s tens or even hundreds of files. It’s too bad reorganization is not a good option right now. Hmm … I have no ideas for you. Very sorry. That’s a pretty unique situation … I hope you are able to find something satisfactory.