View documents in browser

[bafplus]

SOLVED: see post #13

I would be great to have an option to "preview" documents.
At this point i have hundreds of pdf files in my document module.
In the end of the day working in Sugar, al documents that i have viewed today all are downloaded to the local machine.
It would be great to view the pdf files within sugar and download them only whem i need the document for further use.

Using google docs or equivelent is no option since my workstation is not connected to the internet so i realy need something that works directly in my browser.

Using:

Sugar CE 5.4
Platform Linux (ubuntu)
Browser Chrome/Firefox

[Neil_Weston]

I fully support this as a feature request and find it frustrating that such a simple feature is not available

[eggsurplus]

It may be simple to use but not so sure it would be simple to implement. Also not sure what the added value really is with implementing this feature request. It would seem that the same amount of data would need to still be sent to the browser as just downloading and viewing the file.

[bafplus]

I agree about the datatransfer.

The datatransfer is not the problem, but where it stores that data is.
Now its simply downloaded to the downloadfolder.
It would be great to have an option to first view the item (download and store in Temp folder and) and another option to download it to the downloadfolder for further use.

The problem lies in WHERE it stores the data just for viewing.

And i believe that if you have a view option that it only renders the PDF as if it was an (say .jpeg) image, so the browser only displays it but it doesn't stores the file localy.

Take for example, google docs, if you have an pdf as atachment, you can view it in the browser, and if you want you can download it to you're PC.
Implementing the google docs API is also an option.

A good example: http://blogs.adobe.com/pdfdevjunkie/...tag_to_di.html
A way would be that there is an extra tab available in the filedetails dat would display the file using the code.
As extra you could have a button to view fullsize that opens a popup to view the file fullscreen.
Then a downloadbutton gives the viewer the option to download the file to his machine.

[item]

Hello,

+1, i agree to this feature.

kind regards

[Neil_Weston]

I think that the problem is that Sugar stores the documents in its database. - Which I suppose is fair enough for a database structured system.

But in clicking on the link to the document the browser gets all the associated php code of "?module=Documents&offset=6&stamp=1300, etc, etc, etc." not just the direct link to the document itself.

The browser therefore does not seem to get the information it requires to know what type of document it is in order open it, so it does the next best thing and downloads it.

However, if I have a link on a web page directly to a document such as href="http://www.my-site.com/brochures/my-brochure.pdf" target="_blank" the document will open in the browser and give me the opportunity to either just view it, print it or save it to disk.

It would therefore seem to be of some benefit if Sugar was able to retrieve the document from the database without appending all the php code to the file link and just provide the browser with a clean path to the document itself.

[item]

I think that the problem is that Sugar stores the documents in its database. - Which I suppose is fair enough for a database structured system.....

Hi Nell,
For me (CE 61) sugar store all document under a directory in /root/cache/upload/.....
also sugar have a table who store all information about these documents :
- document_id (file name under /cache/upload directory)
- filename
- file extention
- file mime type

Then it must not be difficult for a sugar hero to create a custom code to build the link with a "doc viewer".

Regards

[Neil_Weston]

Didn't realise that they were just loaded into that directory, but as you say the name is totally changed to a long reference id number with no applicable file extension.

Even when the name change is made if it retained the same extension and MIME type even a renamed document called something like 4ad43297-5b69-064c-dd21-4d7f03ca41be.pdf should still open in the Browser.

I wonder if all the documents are the same type if it would be a simple matter of doing a little trick with an .htaccess file using the Apache DefaultType instruction to have the Browser understand how to treat it?

[Neil_Weston]

Just tested my theory as above.

I ONLY have .pdf documents in my cache/upload directory.

I put an .htaccess file that contained the single line;

DefaultType application/pdf

into that directory.

Opened Sugar in my Web Browser and went to the Documents tab

Went to the Document Overview screen for a particular document and clicked on the file link next to File Name:

I have a Mac running OSX 10.6.6 and using Safari as my Browser.

The file immediately opened in Preview. Which was a step forward because I previously had to open it from within my downloads folder.

BUT the Browser still downloaded it into the downloads folder first which is what I am trying to avoid.

Also tried the line DefaultType None/pdf in my htaccess file but that did not make any difference.

So as yet, no simple fix

[bafplus]

I will test you're htaccess trick on my site on a windows with IE, chrome and opera.

I put the htacces in the cache/upload directory.

It did nothing here.
It just downloads the document as usual in al 3 browsers.

I noticed something else,
The document as is stored in the upload dir is not a standard pdf!.
Even if you manualy add the .pdf extension the pdf can not be read bij acrobat.
That maybe is the whole difficulty in implementing the code.

It should first "convert" the pdf the same way as it does when you hit the downloadlink but instead of downloading it should put it in, say, the temp folder on the server.
After that the code as mentioned can be used to view this direct link to the document on the server.

After that, it should run a script that purges the temp folder to delete the temp pdf file after some time.