Creating a file where I can store other files in VB - vb.net

I hope you are having a great day,
Sorry for the weird title but I don't really know which is the correct name for the thing that I am trying to do, my intention is to create like a Project file, like that one created in LabVIEW (.lvproj) where you can store files like .vi, I don't know if this is possible to do in VB, what I am trying to do is creating a file explorer where the user can see all the documents that can be added to the Project file.

Related

How to Create a Program Which Searches for Values from a .txt or any Text Document in Specific Folders

I am relatively new to programming and want to create a program which can solve a problem that I frequently have.
So here's the background to my short story: I was on a website which hosted many files (We're talking about around 500-1000 small files). I was then like," Oh sweet! I want to have all these things in my hard drive so I know that I have access to them... but am probably not going to use them either way". I proceeded to download all 500-1000 files on that site, but encountered a problem when I looked at the properties of my destination file. Let's say that out of 500 on the site, my computer only had 499 files. Just my luck. I wanted to know what was that one pesky file that slipped right by me and download that file specifically. What I didn't want to do was to delete all the files and then try my luck once more in downloading all the files from the website. On the site, there was no indication of what all files I downloaded, so I was completely in the blue. I could go in Ctrl+C each item, then Ctrl+V into the file manager search bar, but that would be tedious to repeat that 500 times.
Now, what I want to do: I wanted to go ahead and take all of the file names from the website (The file name that I downloaded and the file name that was in my drive are the same), put them all in a simple .txt document or something (The website has multiple unwanted text alongside the text I need, such as:
. If this is not possible to extract the text from the site like this, then I am ok with manually entering the names via copy paste). Then I want the computer to take these values in the document and then search for it in a specific folder path (Note: the actual files are in subfolders within the root folder I want to choose, so the program has to be able to search within multiple folders of the root). Then I want the computer to know if the value in the document, is present as a file. If the file doesn't exist, then I want that value/those values in the document to be displayed as the output. I want this cycle to repeat until all the values have been gone through. The output should list the values that were not present.
Conclusion: You probably now get at what I am trying to do, if you don't, tell me what I need to elaborate on. I really don't care how this program is made (what language or software), I just want something that works... but myself don't know how to create.
Thanks for reading and any response is appreciated!
Dhanwanth P :)
Here's a solution in Python in case you would like to explore...
Similar to what you described, all files from the website are listed in an Excel file 'website_files.xlsx'
And all files are saved in a folder 'downloaded_wav'. The script will work regardless the files are saved in the root directory or sub-folders.
Then I run below Python script to look for the missing file:
import pandas as pd
import os
path_folder = 'C:\\Users\\Admin\\Downloads\\downloaded_wav'
downloaded_files = []
d,m = 0,0
for path_name, subfolders, files in os.walk(path_folder): #include all subfolders
for file in files:
d+=1
downloaded_files.append(file)
df = pd.read_excel('website_files.xlsx')
for file in df.values:
if file not in downloaded_files:
print('MISSING', file)
m+=1
print(len(df), 'files on website')
print(d, 'files downloaded')
print(m, 'missing file(s) found')
Output:
MISSING ['OLIVER_snare_disco_mixready_hybrid.wav']
3 files on website
2 files downloaded
1 missing file(s) found
No worries; I found a solution by myself using Excel (God, it's powerful!).
Basically, I copied and pasted my values from the website, then used a filter to show the values only with .wav. Then I used a Power Query from the folder to get me a list of all names of files in a folder. Finally, I went ahead and compared the two using a formula:
=IF(COUNTIF(B:B,D,"OK","MISSING")
If you need more elaboration, I'd be happy to help, just reply to this. There might be an easier way, but I personally liked the straight-forwardness of this. You only need Microsoft excel!
EDIT:
For me, I used these two videos which go over the power query and countif function:
How to Get the List of File Names in a Folder in Excel (without VBA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSCPVBWOqwc
How to Compare Two Excel Sheets (and find the differences): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ou_wfzcKKk
In my case, I made my sheet look like this:

Read .pbix file content through C# or java

I am when trying to use java / c# or any other programming language to modify .pbix file which generated from Microsoft Power BI. Is there any dll provided by POWER BI or how can i read the content through program. I just want to get and update the datasource directory. Please help.
Thanks.
I don't think it's possible, and even if it is, the solution is likely inelegant.
Even if you managed to do this, you would need to open your PBIX file in the PBI Desktop to refresh your data.
Are you doing this because you have many queries and it's inconvenient to change data source string (folder name) of all of them? There is a way to keep your connection string in a single variable as described here.
I don't know your exact setup, but looking at your question, lets say you have sets of files in different folders and you want to change the folder in one step.
To use the approach from the link above but with file input, you need to do the following:
If it's a new report, import your files as usual
Create new query: "New Source"->"Blank Query"
You will see "Query1" and an empty text box, enter the folder name, for example "C:\". Rename this query to "Folder".
Go to your imported file in the query editor, "test1" in my example. In query settings on the right, select source.
Change the filename by substituting the folder with your "Folder" query, for example:
...File.Contents("C:\test1.csv"),...
...File.Contents(Folder & "test1.csv"),...
Repeat for all imported files, then "Close & Apply".
Now whenever you need to change the folder with your files, edit your "Folder" value and "Refresh".

vb.net using a custom file to save different types of data

I'm brushing up on my VB.NET skills for a future project I will be working on. This application will be very data intensive, requiring 20+ data tables, user supplied images, and possibly even short audio/video files.
I want to be able to save all of this information into a single, external file, so that the user can share what they create with the world.
Ideally, I would like all the text based data to be stored in a database format that I can easily work with, preferably via the entity framework.
Pretty much all the information I'm finding relates to only saving a single text/XML file, and that will not really work for me. Can anyone point me in the proper direction, or suggest a method that will let me save the data?
I'm working inside Visual Studio 2012 Pro, with a Visual Basic Windows Form Application. Please let me know if you need any additional information.
I'll expand my comment to an answer instead.
As previously mentioned this sounds like a zip file. In this you can:
Have a file called databasetables.txt or whatever containing the database tables.
You can have Audio, Video, Images etc in respective folders. This way when you open your file you can just load all files in the Audio folder to get the expected files.
You can have information stored in xmlfiles.
Endless posibilities...
Just keep in mind that you might want to load all this only into the memory of the computer so you dont extract it onto the hard drive.
And you dont have to save the file as .zip to open it as .zip, just select your own cool suffix which will look neat :)

Any way to automate the process of opening a .mpp file and saving it as a .csv?

I need to find a way to automate the process when a user uploads a microsoft project file to a web application I already have created. The process will need to basically use the save as from project to save into a .csv file so I can use this to import the data to an SQL database (this is needed for custom reporting we already have set up using SQL). I need to automate this process because I will be receiving tons of project files, and if the process is automated the users will then be able to instantly see results.
Basically, is there any way to create or run an automated process that will save these project files as .csv files? Even if the csv files are not formatted correctly, I can find a way around that, just need to first get them into .csv files.
Thank you.
edit - the only way i could think of this is to follow the instructions listed below, but
I would then need to automate a process to open the file and hit save so this works... any other suggestions?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/projectprofessional2010general/thread/eea4ca15-0a0b-4c07-9989-87536b961385/
edit 2 - also looking into ways using Microsoft.Office.Interop.MSProject but not finding any luck.
edit 3 0 now using mpxj - the only issue I am having is the following listed below. Converting their example to vb.
Private Shared Function ToEnumerable(ByVal javaCollection As Collection) As EnumerableCollection
Return New EnumerableCollection(javaCollection)
End Function
the error is with EnumberableCollection - visual studio is not picking it up as a valid type - anything I am doing wrong or should substitute?
If you aren't wedded to using MS Project itself to extract data from the project files, you could consider using the MPXJ library. This would allow you to write a simple utility to open the MPP files you are given, extract the data items you are interested in, and write them directly to your database (or an intermediate CSV file, as required). MPXJ comes in Java and .Net flavours, so you can use your preferred language to do the work.
Jon
p.s. Disclaimer: I maintain MPXJ

Download List - Mac Objective-c

It would be far to much for me to ask for a full solution. However, could you point me in the right direction in what I need to look up, learn etc as its the first time I am going to attempt something like this.
What I want to do, is in my Mac application, have a list of items which are files which I want to store online. Then from inside the application the user can download any of the items stored at that location online. If I add new items to download online I want the app to automatically add them to the list for download.
That make sense? Anyway, its the first time I have done anything like this using an online server and accessing it via an app, so any support would be hugely appreciated.
Sounds like you want an ftp type server, you can then get list of remote files, upload and download file, if you do search for Cocoa ftp I am sure you will find someone has written a nice wrapper class for ftp, there are even complete open source apps for ftp whose code you can examine, FileZilla, other you could just use NSTask, and call the ftp command line tool on all macs.