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Automatically collect file name and date of a document

Emmanuel_Romeu

Hello,

a lead working in Quality Assurance have to manage thousands of documents (excel, word, pdf, power point). He wants to automatically collect a) file name , b) date of creation, c) date of last update as a JMP file to quickly identify which documents are up-to-date or have been recently updated or likely need revision (ISO9001 requires regular updates/checking for appropriateness). In addition he wants to evaluate the content by comparing documents to identify redundancy (i.e. 2 documents with different names but with the exact same content) or mismatch ((i.e. 2 documents with the same name but with different content). I don't see any workaround with JMP but was wondering if anyone have an idea. Thanks for the help. Emmanuel

Accepted answers

Mark_Bailey

Names Default to Here( 1 );

dt = New Table(
	New Column( "File Name", Character, Nominal ),
	New Column( "Created", Numeric, Continuous, Format( "ddMonyyyy:h:m:s", 22, 0 ) ),
	New Column( "Modified", Numeric, Continuous, Format( "ddMonyyyy:h:m:s", 22, 0 ) )
);

file = Files In Directory( "$SAMPLE_DATA" );
n files = N Items( file );

For( f = 1, f <= n files, f++,
	path = "$SAMPLE_DATA/" || file[f];
	Eval(
		Substitute(
			Expr( dt << Add Rows( { :File Name = nnn, :Created = ccc, :Modified =  mmm } ) ),
			Expr( nnn ), file[f],
			Expr( ccc ), Creation Date( path ),
			Expr( mmm ), Last Modification Date( path )
		)
	)
);

ian_jmp

FWIW, my reply above was in relation to the stated 'In addition' requirements . In this regard you might be able to make some progress with blobs. But I'm not sure how much work this would be, nor how reliable the results for the different file types might be.

ian_jmp

To add to my first response (and accepting the rather open-ended requirements!), I imagine that you would need something like this (which is not a recommendation, of course). As mentioned already, and given that they state they have 'CLI for automation with other tools', I assume that you could invoke this with 'Run Program()'. I think to try to reinvent this functionality in JMP would be misguided.

If you can restrict the number of file types then you might be able to make some progress, but it would certainly not be 'no work', and I don't believe there are many who could help. But I'd be happy to be proved wrong, of course . . .

All comments

ian_jmp

Although JSL provides some 'file' capabilities (for example, 'Files In Directory()' and 'File Exists()'), I'm inclined to think you would have more luck with using 'RunProgram()' to execute OS commands or utilities from JMP. But, as you imply I think, if you are doing that you may not need to bother with JMP at all.

Mark_Bailey

Names Default to Here( 1 );

dt = New Table(
	New Column( "File Name", Character, Nominal ),
	New Column( "Created", Numeric, Continuous, Format( "ddMonyyyy:h:m:s", 22, 0 ) ),
	New Column( "Modified", Numeric, Continuous, Format( "ddMonyyyy:h:m:s", 22, 0 ) )
);

file = Files In Directory( "$SAMPLE_DATA" );
n files = N Items( file );

For( f = 1, f <= n files, f++,
	path = "$SAMPLE_DATA/" || file[f];
	Eval(
		Substitute(
			Expr( dt << Add Rows( { :File Name = nnn, :Created = ccc, :Modified =  mmm } ) ),
			Expr( nnn ), file[f],
			Expr( ccc ), Creation Date( path ),
			Expr( mmm ), Last Modification Date( path )
		)
	)
);

Emmanuel_Romeu

Hi Mark, that is just great.

Any chance to get the name of the person who did the last update (and maybe the one who created the document) ? Emmanuel

ian_jmp

Mark_Bailey

You can see what information is currently (JMP Pro 17 under development) available through JSL functions by selecting Help > Scripting Index and then click the popup button and select Functions. Now select the File group on the left. This result is what you should see:

script index.PNG

I do not see the name of the creator or modifier in this list. That information might not be stored with the file directory.

Emmanuel_Romeu

is there any documentation on the blob ? I'm able to use Char to blob to collect information from a word document, but I'm not sure how to compare 2 documents to identify if identical or different ? and wondering if we can isolate the differences if any.

ian_jmp