Rick_Fla Posted November 30, 2004 Posted November 30, 2004 Just wanted some input from the users here. I am creating an application for my wife to help her organize her cross stitch patterns, They can be in pdf, gif, jpeg, or other formats. Just wanted to add a way for her to add descriptions and be able to search the descriptions. What I have now is when she makes a category it creates a directory, and then she can make a sub category under it, which would be just another directory. When she adds files, it just moves or copies them to the directory. When she selects a category to view, the app will list all the files in that directory, when she selects the file, then I want the ability to add descriptions and such. My question is this, should I just make a file in each directory that keeps the information for the files located in it. Or should I just go ahead and create an access database that uses the filename as the key? Just trying to make it simple, but I am stuck on which method I should use. Thanks for any feedback! Quote "Nobody knows what I do until I stop doing it."
Administrators PlausiblyDamp Posted November 30, 2004 Administrators Posted November 30, 2004 If the files / folders are ever moved (quite likely in an end-user scenario) then the DB will quickly get out of sync with the folder structure. It may be easier to just use a simple XML file to store the details and include this in each folder along with the items in question. Quote Posting Guidelines FAQ Post Formatting Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. -- Albert Einstein
Rick_Fla Posted November 30, 2004 Author Posted November 30, 2004 Thanks for the quick response, I had a feeling the better idea would be for some type of file to be placed in each directory. makes the application a little more portable as well. Guess I need to dust off the XML books and work on learning it a little more. Thanks! Quote "Nobody knows what I do until I stop doing it."
donnacha Posted November 30, 2004 Posted November 30, 2004 If you are going to use XML, then make sure you can load it to a dataset as this will make your application easier to code. I am not sure if an xml file is easier than access, as your app need to know what folders to deal with so if you move them you need to modify the app. So if you can handle this wasy, then you can handle using access. If you are using the db then I would advise storing the directory path as a config part and the just storing the individual file names. This allows you to easily cater for directories moving. As they say it is 6 of one and a half a dozen of the other...... Quote Hamlet
Rick_Fla Posted November 30, 2004 Author Posted November 30, 2004 Right now I am loading the XML file into a dataset, and using the dataset to add, update, and delete records. Then I write the dataset back out to the XML file. For now this seems to be the way I am going to work it. Thanks for all the help and the ideas. Quote "Nobody knows what I do until I stop doing it."
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