Need to get a document or doc ID by UUID or document name

There is the content tools plugin https://community.appian.com/b/appmarket/posts/content-tools
Is there a reason document UUIDs are being stored? If you need to have the same document in multiple environments it's best to use a constant.

Hi Danny,

Thanks for the plugin.  Yes, the reason is that my use case is to query some sort of identifier from the DB, and display an image dynamically in a form.  There could be hundreds and eventually thousands of different images that need to be displayed dynamically.  

As a follow up question, how can I get the UUID of a newly uploaded document?

We recommend storing the document ID in the database and not the UUID. IDs are unique per environment. You can then using the toDocument() function https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/20.2/fnc_conversion_todocument.html to retrieve the document

Thank you for the suggestions Danny.  Unfortunately in my use case the recommended approach will likely work as I am in a unique situation where I have no control over the database or data.  The person who controls the data does not want to deal with updating the IDs every time they deploy to a new environment.  

My detailed use case is as follows.

1. Allow the user to upload a document to Appian
2. Store a reference to that document in an external db that I am connected to via a connected system
3. On a different UI, query the external DB, receive a list of references to the document, and display those documents dynamically.

The parts I need help with are:

1. Which reference to use for the document, given a strong preference to not have IDs change between environments.  Currently I am using a decision table to map to UUIDs, so UUIDs seem like a good option if the rest of the requirements can be met with UUID as the document reference.
2. How to retrieve a reference to a freshly uploaded document so I can write it to the external DB.  

Any guidance on questions 1 and 2 would be greatly appreciated.

If they have to deploy documents, I still recommend a constant per document. What is there use case for deploying documents between environments? If the user is uploading a document, I imagine it will be in their production environment where the ID will remain constant

Danny, that is a good point.  The reason is that while the client is imagining a future state where the user will have the ability to add images to be used dynamically on forms at some point, my team is in a position where we will need to maintain a list of these images manually for some time before the user has the ability to upload themselves. It would make that easier to manage if we could set it up for one environment, and not have to change the IDs in the DB when deploying.

If I was to use doc id, what is the best way to retrieve the document id for a newly uploaded document?  I know I have to submit the form first, and retrieve it after submission, but I am not sure how to retrieve it the newly uploaded document.

Thanks again

Have you considered adding some kind of "Admin" page that would allow you to manage the images manually at the beginning? That's often what I've seen in cases like this because you then wouldn't have to do a deployment. Also, I'm not sure how often you expect to need to change these documents, but it will be a lot easier to manage them directly from the production UI rather than doing a deployment each time.

Like Danny said, I'd recommend avoiding the use of UUID for documents if possible. Granted it would probably work fine, but just seems unecessary.

Have you considered adding some kind of "Admin" page that would allow you to manage the images manually at the beginning? That's often what I've seen in cases like this because you then wouldn't have to do a deployment. Also, I'm not sure how often you expect to need to change these documents, but it will be a lot easier to manage them directly from the production UI rather than doing a deployment each time.

Like Danny said, I'd recommend avoiding the use of UUID for documents if possible. Granted it would probably work fine, but just seems unecessary.

Thanks Peter, that is what I will be doing eventually (described in my previous comment). I think I will just have to move it up the priority list.  

If I was to use doc id, what is the best way to retrieve the document id for a newly uploaded document?  I know I have to submit the form first, and retrieve it after submission, but I am not sure how to retrieve it the newly uploaded document.

Great question! On your form, have a rule input of type document which you'll use as the value and saveInto field for your file upload. Then, in the process model have a corresponding process variable of type document to map to your form rule input. You can then use this process variable to get the document ID by doing document(pv!myDoc,"id")

Thank you Danny!  I will give this a try.

This works consistently only if you introduced a delay after the submit action before accessing the documents.  Otherwise you get this error -  

a!forEach: Error in a!forEach() expression during iteration 1: Expression evaluation error at function 'document' [line 4]: Document Does Not Exist or has been Deleted) (Data Outputs).

The delay of 1 minute gives Appian enough time to finish the uploading of the files internally to the correct folder before you can access the files' attributes. 

NOTE - I have also noticed that documents couldn't be accessed in the same process model that is called in the submit action of the file upload form if activity chaining is enabled in the process model.  The behavior was random.  I have disabled activity chaining in my PM just to avoid surprises.