How do I download a text file to a device to be the basis of a Lookup

Hi, I am a rare user of TracerPlus, and need a point in the right direction.

We already have a working application that scans barcodes successfully and returns data back to the company server, using Connect and Wi-Fi. We now need to enhance this by validating the scanned barcode against a lookup list of 'valid' barcodes before sending information back to the server. This list needs to be downloaded as a single column text file from the server to the device on a periodic basis.

I have looked at a couple of YouTube videos but have been unable to see how to download the text file itself.

Can anyone advise on this?

Many thanks

Regards

Tom
 

OliverR

Member
Hi Tom, to import a text file manually in TracerPlus you need to copy it to the \My Documents\TracerPlus9\Data\Import on the mobile device. Then, in your application, you need to go into the File menu and choose 'Import Data' -> 'All Sessions'.

Your text file will need to be named 'Sxx_data.txt' where 'xx' is the number of your session. So if your lookup session is Session 2, your .txt filename would be 'S02_data.txt'. After importing is completed, it will automatically be renamed to 'old_S02_data.txt'.

Adding the suffic '_auto' (eg. S02_data_auto.txt) to your filename will cause it to be imported automatically upon starting TracerPlus on your scanner.

Fields in your .txt file need to be tab delimited. I've attached an example to this post. Obviously if you've only got 1 column, then that's not applicable. The way I would go about it though, is to have 2 columns, where the second column is just a constant (eg. "valid", like in the attached example). Then in your scanning session you would add a lookup field 'BarcodeCheck' which looks up the 2nd column in the lookup session, based on the scanned barcode. I would set the validation so that it needs to have a minimum length of 1. If a valid barcode is scanned, the field will be populated with "valid" and the validation will pass. Otherwise the field will remain empty, and so the validation will fail.

However, I see you're already using Connect. In that case I would think it's easier to use Connect to read the data from the .txt file somewhere on the computer or the network, and import it in the Lookup session that way.

Hope this helps!
 

Attachments

Hi Tom, to import a text file manually in TracerPlus you need to copy it to the \My Documents\TracerPlus9\Data\Import on the mobile device. Then, in your application, you need to go into the File menu and choose 'Import Data' -> 'All Sessions'.

Your text file will need to be named 'Sxx_data.txt' where 'xx' is the number of your session. So if your lookup session is Session 2, your .txt filename would be 'S02_data.txt'. After importing is completed, it will automatically be renamed to 'old_S02_data.txt'.

Adding the suffic '_auto' (eg. S02_data_auto.txt) to your filename will cause it to be imported automatically upon starting TracerPlus on your scanner.

Fields in your .txt file need to be tab delimited. I've attached an example to this post. Obviously if you've only got 1 column, then that's not applicable. The way I would go about it though, is to have 2 columns, where the second column is just a constant (eg. "valid", like in the attached example). Then in your scanning session you would add a lookup field 'BarcodeCheck' which looks up the 2nd column in the lookup session, based on the scanned barcode. I would set the validation so that it needs to have a minimum length of 1. If a valid barcode is scanned, the field will be populated with "valid" and the validation will pass. Otherwise the field will remain empty, and so the validation will fail.

However, I see you're already using Connect. In that case I would think it's easier to use Connect to read the data from the .txt file somewhere on the computer or the network, and import it in the Lookup session that way.

Hope this helps!

Hi Oliver

Many thanks for your reply and the information. I apologise for not replying sooner, but I have been away. I hope to look at this in the next week, so I will let you know how I get on.

Regards

Tom
 
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