Is there a way to append a file with (2) if a file with the same name already exists? Currently, the 'Move a File' connection for Box.com errors out if a file with the same name exists and the entire workflow ends.
THANKS!
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Box.com connection - Move a file
+3Best answer by Ken_T
Well... there actually -is- a solution, but its tedious and takes a lot of actions. I'm currently doing this for all Box movement functions within my workflows, and have made a component workflow just for box file movement.
1) Store the filename as a variable (will will be disecting this later)
2) Set a variable to track how many times you've been through the loop
3) Use "Box - Get Folder Contents" to store a collection of all objects in the target folder.
4) Begin a loop that will exit once a unique filename has been determined
5) Use "Check if item exists in a collection" to determine if the intended filename is already in the target folder (from step 3)
6) Use "Logic and flow - Branch by condition" to have a separate path for an OK filename vs. a conflicting filename
7) on the OK file name path, simply move the file and exit the loop
8) on the conflicting filename path, break apart the filename into 2 separate variables using Regex. The base filename should be a regex of .[^.\/:*?"<>| ]+$ The file extension should be a regex of [^.]+$
9) create a new filename by adding the filename & "_" & the LoopCounter & the filenameExtension.
10) end the loop
By modifying the filename in step 9, the next time the loop completes the filename will now be named "mytextfile_1.txt" after the first loop if there is already a "mytextfile.txt" in the folder. It will repeat the loop until a conflict is not present.
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- Nintex Employee
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@poppy Currently this is not possible, you could have it overwrite but that is really only the current option. You can suggest functionality over on our uservoice(https://nintex.uservoice.com/)
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Well... there actually -is- a solution, but its tedious and takes a lot of actions. I'm currently doing this for all Box movement functions within my workflows, and have made a component workflow just for box file movement.
1) Store the filename as a variable (will will be disecting this later)
2) Set a variable to track how many times you've been through the loop
3) Use "Box - Get Folder Contents" to store a collection of all objects in the target folder.
4) Begin a loop that will exit once a unique filename has been determined
5) Use "Check if item exists in a collection" to determine if the intended filename is already in the target folder (from step 3)
6) Use "Logic and flow - Branch by condition" to have a separate path for an OK filename vs. a conflicting filename
7) on the OK file name path, simply move the file and exit the loop
8) on the conflicting filename path, break apart the filename into 2 separate variables using Regex. The base filename should be a regex of .[^.\/:*?"<>| ]+$ The file extension should be a regex of [^.]+$
9) create a new filename by adding the filename & "_" & the LoopCounter & the filenameExtension.
10) end the loop
By modifying the filename in step 9, the next time the loop completes the filename will now be named "mytextfile_1.txt" after the first loop if there is already a "mytextfile.txt" in the folder. It will repeat the loop until a conflict is not present.
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+3@Ken_T Thank you for taking the time to explain your solution. I was able to built it out and will be able to use it! Thanks so much again.
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For anyone that is using a solution similar to what I described above; please be aware that Nintex currently only supports searching through 200 entries in a folder. if you have more than 200 items (files + subfolders) then the Nintex connector will act as if there are only 200. This can lead to errors where the WF doesn't realize there is a duplicate file name, but the duplicate is past the Box API's pagination value (200).
I've started a feature request to add support for paginated responses in Connectors. Feel free to add a vote to that request if you use any methods like I described to loop through contents.
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+3Hey @Ken_T ,
Re this:
1) Store the filename as a variable (will will be disecting this later)
Is that something you could share? I'm having trouble pulling the filename from a "file upload" action in NWC. I can pull this by getting an item from the attachment collection, but not sure how to regedit that down to just filename.
String: {"connectionId":"555555","path":"/NintexWorkflowCloud/6ec10e98-2e3e-430e-9cfc-73f551714ab9_1_1/empPhotoExample3.jpg"}
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I have not had great luck parsing the NWC files collection. My example used the Box.com file object which you can get attributes from much easier.
I think this Regex might get you started. From your sample string this regex: /(?:.(?!/))+$ will return this string: /empPhotoExample3.jpg"}
From there, you know you need to remove the first character, and the last two characters which is a much simpler operation.
Hope that helps.
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