File tags...

[camaswx]

First off let me say Hello all! (first post)
I heard of and started exploring Cumulus a couple weeks ago, started lurking here then. I have a test page operating now, I plan on using Cumulus for my new weather site soon. URL will be posted then.
I am switching from VWS to Cumulus. I am impressed with Cumulus Steve, Thanks for providing it and I intend on pressing that 'Donate' button after I get a little further up and running.

Now the Question, VWS allowed one to use filetags to add one's own text file to a page easily. Is this possible with Cumulus or on the To-Do list for the future? I ran a test with no luck. I intend on running Cumulus and VWS at the same time with VirtualVP and I'd like to be able to add the NOAA reports and the such into my site.

Thank you again
David (Camaswx)

[steve]

No, Cumulus doesn't currently do that. Could you explain a bit more about what the file tags do? How does the text file get put into the page - is it just a simple 'include' of the file?

[beteljuice]

... I'd like to be able to add the NOAA reports and the such into my site...

Are you saying you can do that now ? - if so are the text files being created by VWS or .php or Javascript ?

Or is that a 'wish list', in which case there are (many) coding samples on the web for 'importing' that kind of data, and formating it into your pages.

[steve]

Are you saying you can do that now ? - if so are the text files being created by VWS or .php or Javascript ?.

I think VWS creates them. But I do intend to have Cumulus create them one day.

[camaswx]

VWS generates NOAA reports, and a couple more as well, but it could be used for any text file I believe.
There is a window similar to the Configuration/Internet Settings/Files window in Cumulus but it's just a column of textbox's with browse button's where you choose the file to insert. In Cumulus style web tag syntax the file tag would look like <#c:\cumulus\reports\report.txt> When the page is processed the text in that file is inserted into the page like web tag data would be.

I'm not sure if it's a 'include' actually, the 'view source' that I've seen in pages using it shows a <pre></pre> html tag at the start and end of the data, I believe that preserves the formatting of the text. But a include seems like a reasonable guess to me.

[steve]

It would be easy enough to do - in the processing of the web tags I could just check for a backslash in the tag, if present assume it's a filename, and substitute the contents of the file (plus the <pre> tags). I may sneak it into the next build...

[steve]

I tried to do this - but unfortunately the library routines that I use to parse the page for web tags will only allow alphanumerics, so the file path gets truncated after the drive letter. I'll have to think of a different way to do it. Maybe a table of files, with corresponding tags <#file1>, <#file2> etc. Not so flexible, though.