Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

arjunv864 — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 10:43:48 GMT

Hi Asif,

I hope you have implemented this already. However I think the best way to implement this is as follows:

1. A Web API is created in Appian which will be exposed to external sites.
2. Since Web API doesn't accept document as such, the document has to be passed either as a URL(Appian process can perform HTTP Document Download with this URL) or as Base64 String.
3. If the external site can provide Appian the URLs that would be the ideal way to handle as there is less load on the API call.
4. If external System can provide you the Base64, you could write a utility plugin that converts base64 to Appian Document. However Please be aware that the process which holds base64 string in a variable is heavy when the document size is large and hence plan for optimized data management policies for such instances.

Please let us know if you had taken any other approach in your solution.

Regards,
Arjun.

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

asifh — Sun, 03 Jun 2018 01:34:05 GMT

Thank you very much for your response.
Kindly note that my scenario is the following:
Different users will post their cases to that external site with different number of files e.g. 2 files, 3 files , 5 files and upto 20 files and the external site administrator dont want to store those files to their site. External site admin just want to POST those files as a stream to our Appian site..
Now advice me how to cater this scenario Please

Regards,

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

andriyr — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 14:42:07 GMT

Hi Asif,

If the files are already stored on the external site you should be able to expose a simple web API + process model to handle this.

1. You would expose a web API that takes in parameters like "document URL" and "targetFolder" (or add logic to decide the target folder based on which user is performing the action, etc.)

2. From your external site you would call this web API.

3. The web API would pass this data to a process model, which would pull the file using the HTTP File Download Smart Service and store it in the appropriate folder.

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

Dastagiri Dudekula — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 06:15:08 GMT

Create a web API to store the document. Use this service to push the documents

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

asifh — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 01:29:05 GMT

My Scenario is:
User from an external site wants to call my APPIAN site web service and post multiple files (small size files) . Kindly share if you have any example with such scenario implementation

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

namratak356 — Thu, 31 May 2018 19:11:11 GMT

Yeah you can trigger an Appian Process model through an email containing this document as an attachment and move it to respective Appian KC folder.

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

ravichandt316819 — Thu, 31 May 2018 12:57:39 GMT

Hi Ashif,
Yes, you can do it. As Raghu mentioned there are several ways to achieve this.
1. You need to have a process model to move documents to the desired location in Appian.
Once the model is ready you can publish the model as webservice and you can call that webservice in the source environment and you can move it

2. You can create a web api/integration object to achieve the same in Appian
Question: How the destination system storing the document?

If it is in base 64 format, you can also do base 64 conversion which you can achieve by installing a smart service/function from shared component.

RE: Programmatically upload a file into Appian from an external site ?

Shanmukha — Thu, 31 May 2018 12:40:04 GMT

Hi Asif,

There are couple of ways ways as I remember to upload documents to Appian systems KC and it's folders. We can upload or push documents to some temporary folder in appian system and then we will trigger a process model to move them to KC and it's related folders based on the application.

Please let us know if you are looking for anything specific.

Thanks,
Raghav