Feature Request: 'a!fileUploadField' should allow access to file properties (fv!files) within its SaveInto parameter

Certified Lead Developer

Hi All,

First, some background: many of us still remember a time when using validations based on uploaded document properties (name, extension, size, etc) in a!fileUploadField() was not "officially" possible and therefore some of us were forced to resort to unsupported functionality to access these properties from just-uploaded documents, for various use cases.  The most common use case, of course, was validating that uploaded files were of the correct type (extension), and thankfully a few versions ago, Appian added the fv!files property to the component, to access the important properties of uploaded documents.

Unfortunately, the fv!files feature was was only added to the Validations parameter, leaving a few other use cases not "officially" possible using supported functionality.  To me, the most obvious of these use cases is:

I want to have a text field next to my a!fileUploadField component, which will pre-populate with the name of an uploaded document, and will be editable by the end user.  The value of that field will then be used within the "fileNames" parameter of the file upload field, in such a way that any edits made by the user are saved as the uploaded document's name within Appian.  (Note: to clarify, the specific part of this scenario that isn't possible is the ability to pre-populate the name of an uploaded file into another variable for use in a text field.)

Therefore, it would be incredibly useful if the saveInto Parameter could access the fv!files data in such a way as to allow us to duplicate any of the contained properties off to other rule inputs, local variables, etc.

Other use cases could include setting external variables due to specific extensions being uploaded, or specific sizes or size ranges, etc - there are probably dozens of valid edge cases that this feature would satisfy which now aren't possible unless using unsupported workarounds.  Additionally, from an outside perspective at least, I would think this would have a high likelihood of being a low-effort add on the part of Appian's product engineers, since it would in certain ways duplicate the functionality currently enabled in the validations parameter of this component.

Everyone please let me know what you think.
Thanks!

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