File Attachments: Trying to understand

[Zippidty Doodah]

I’ve been through a 468 page search to no answer

In the File Attachment field, clicking on the attachment, then clicking on the right arrow it shows: Show or export selected files. I am expecting for that to return the location of the file I attached into the form (IOW not using the alias method)
However the return shows a drop down menu window: Select a folder to save the selected files to. I was expecting to see the file attachment where it is located inside the .tapforms file>show package contents> db….name>attachments folder (I am within the lower case attachments folder.)

So, If I need to delete an outdated attachment in a record completely from my document folder, just highlighting the file attachment to delete, then hitting the – key, doesn’t actually remove it from the attachments folder. I’ve seen this not work as I have found an attachment in the attachments folder, and watched while using the – key to delete it from the record— which it does— but the actual file attachment in the attachements folder does not delete.

Is there something I’m missing for complete deletion of an attachment?

tia

[Brendan]

Hi,

Hmm… It should have deleted the file on disk too.

The reason it asks you to download the file instead of showing you the file on disk is because the database engine (CouchbaseLite) handles all the attachments internally and the files are given random filenames and stored as .blob files. So it wasn’t really a user facing thing to show in the Finder.

In Tap Forms Pro files are stored in a similar fashion, but it’s handled by CoreData and it works much better in that respect.

But I’ll have to look at my code in Tap Forms 5 and see what’s going on there.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Zippidty Doodah]

Hey Brendan,
Just looking again at this issue and wondering if there is an issue with deletion because I have all my Tap Forms database documents on an external drive?
I always open the documents from that external drive and there are no database documents or forms left on my internal hard drive.
I’ve never checked this before when documents were stored on the internal drive, so don’t know if deletion worked then.
I would love to move up to Tap Forms Pro, but can’t. Have to stay on Mojave.
The Version 5 I have is 5.3.41, and can’t jump that up to .45 due to OS.

again, tia

[Brendan]

Hi,

I’m not sure if having the document stored on an external drive would make a difference. But you could do an experiment and duplicate a document and copy it to your internal drive and try deleting the media and see what happens there. Use the Duplicate Document function instead of just copying it in the Finder. Especially if you’re syncing that document.

I’m sorry you’re not able to upgrade to the latest Tap Forms 5 or Tap Forms Pro version. Ya, it does requires macOS 10.15 for Tap Forms 5 and macOS 13.0 and higher for Tap Forms Pro.

[Author]

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