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Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found

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On 2018-04-09 16:23:16 +0000, Charles H. Sampson said:

> Charles H. Sampson <csampson@inetworld.net> wrote:
> 
>> I'm creating a largish database that contains pointers to music files
>> (.aif) in containers. The database has reached over 1000 records in the
>> that use the containers. I've just noticed that over 500 of them now
>> display the message "The file cannot be found". I got this message once
>> before when I changed the name of the disc the files are located on.
>> (They're all on the same disk.) I managed to fix it then, but I don't
>> remember how. In any case, there have been no new disk name changes.
>> 
>> Any ideas? In previous posts, the feeling was that containers are a
>> mess.
> 
> I've been working on this problem for a while and I've discovered a lot.
> My big conclusion is that containers are such a mess as to be unusable,
> so I'm giving up on this database and reverting to an organization of
> audio files that I control.
> 
> Now, some details. First and foremost, my problems were caused by
> changing the name of the disk (partition) that the files were on. Of
> course, I had put only a reference to the files into the containers.

The field store the filepath, so that includes the drive / volume name. 
Changing the drive's name means FileMaker can no longer find a drive by 
that name.



> I interpret this as using an alias; OS X's alias has long been able to
> negotiate name changes, so the problem is basically that FileMaker is
> not using the full capabilities of OS X. (Worse, in my estimation, is
> that I'm not allowed to put an honest-to-God alias into the container,
> but that's another issue.)
> 
> In trying to solve my problem, I came across the script function
> GetContainerAttribute. That function doesn't work, another poor
> implementation of containers. The problem is with the second parameter,
> which specifies the attribute being queried. I was interested in the
> filename attribute. When I tried making that second parameter literally
> "filename", I got a "table not located" error message. I put "filename"
> in quotes, which got around the error message but gave no information at
> all, much less information about the file name.
> 
> I went to the FileMaker community and discovered that GetAsText works
> for containers, returning the full path name of the referenced file.
> (But see later.) Using this, I could see what was wrong and I wrote a
> script to fix the problem -- up to a point. After around 550 containers,
> GetAsText suddenly started producing file names that weren't full names
> and my script didn't work. I actually handled the file name problem
> manually for the remaining 50 or so files.
> 
> However, I concluded that this fragility didn't bode well for my
> database and I've abandoned it.

Despite the product name "FileMaker Pro", it is not actually designed 
to catalogue actual computer files. It's simply a database for dealing 
with textual and numerical data.

Container fields are only really meant to contain small files for use 
within the database itself. Even then, the sound capabilities are 
woeful, so Container fields are really only of use for graphics - 
things like separate images for the two states of a custom button ("on" 
and "off")..

Helpful Harry  :o)

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Thread

Container Problem: File Cannot be Found csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson) - 2018-04-02 17:41 -0700
  Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com> - 2018-04-03 13:36 +1200
    Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found ursus.kirk@gmail.com - 2018-04-03 10:09 +0200
  Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson) - 2018-04-09 09:23 -0700
    Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com> - 2018-04-10 09:40 +1200
      Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson) - 2018-04-14 11:59 -0700
        Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com> - 2018-04-15 10:07 +1200
          Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found Erik Appeldoorn <ursus.kirk@gmail.com> - 2018-04-15 08:25 +0200
            Re: Container Problem: File Cannot be Found Helpful Harry <HelpfulHarry@BusyWorking.com> - 2018-04-15 19:24 +1200

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