Need to download files in zip format

Question

Hi, 
 
 I have list of files on UI which i want to download in zip folder. 
 What is the way out to implement this approach. 
 Kindly share me any code or any approach on this ?

Mike Schmitt · Answer

You need one of two available plug-ins: " Add Documents to Zip ", or " Document Zipper ", depending on your use case. Document Zipper appears to be an easier tool if you want to create a zip file based on the entire contents of an existing Appian file folder; Add Documents to Zip is probably the better tool when you need to manually construct a zip from an arbitrary list of files, and/or when you need to add new files to an existing zip file. 
 Unfortunately, nobody here will be able to write your process model for you, so i'm afraid the best approach I can recommend is just to try, see how far you can get, and come back here with more specific questions when you get stuck on something. Previous posts (like in the few other threads you've added recent comments to), should provide a lot of help as far as how to implement one of these.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

If you use the "add documents to zip" smart service (and not "document zipper"), then you can feed in the document ids directly without worrying about copying / moving them to a different folder within Appian first. For most use cases this is probably a faster and more flexible approach.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

All documents generated in Appian by a smart service or other means need to save into an Appian folder, whether you need to keep the document afterwards or not. If you only need to keep this zip file long enough to be downloaded by a user, my suggestion is to save it into a common temporary documents folder, and then clean up (delete) the generated zip file at a later time.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

sauravk said: Why do we need this Documents Path 
 The "Document Paths" input will determine the path and filename for the matching document from the "Documents to Add" array within the generated ZIP file only . Therefore if you only want the documents to be at the "root level" of the zip file (the most common way), you would simply pass an array of the filenames. This needs to include the file extension, i.e. {"file1.docx", "file2.docx"} , not {"file1", "file2"} . 
 And for further clarification, if you wanted the files to be in a folder off the root of the zip file, let's say a top level folder called "Documents", you would pass this array: {"Documents\file1.docx", "Documents\file2.docx"}

Mike Schmitt · Answer

sauravk said: I think so Base Doc/Save In folder/Document Path is optional here 
 Per my best understanding (and supported by myself using it successfully in the past): 
 If "Create New Document" is set to TRUE, then you must provide "New Document Name " and "Save In Folder" . 
 If "Create New Document" is set to FALSE, then "Existing Document" is required - the files will be added to the "Base Document" zip file (if provided) and the changed file will become a new version on the same file ID.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

I'm not sure if this is what's causing your error, but you should be aware that the smart service expects you to provide the full document name as I mentioned before, which is the name + extension (so far your code just passes the name). For example, 
 document(fv!item, "name") & "." & "document(fv!item, "extension") 
 It might still work without the extensions, but your resulting zip file will end up with files without extensions which you probably don't want. 
 Other than this, all I can suggest is monitor a running instance and make sure your PVs have populated correctly - most importantly, pv!documents (should be either an array of document or an array of integer, the node will correctly typecast what it needs from either of these), and pv!documentPath (this needs to also be an array of course, at the very least containing the full name of each document in the array).

Mike Schmitt · Answer

I can't tell for sure until you post a screenshot, but it looks as if your "documentPath" array has a null entry at the end there. I expect that might cause unexpected issues when you feed the arrays into the zip file node, as it expects 2 arrays of the same length (and the document path values would never be null).

Mike Schmitt · Answer

Please provide a screnshot of this when you can, as there's not much more I can think of to troubleshoot without it. For example, here's mine:

Mike Schmitt · Answer

I think you need to go back to the expression you're using to pull your doc IDs and troubleshoot more. Perhaps comment out the startProcess() call temporarily and just write the docIds and docNames into local variables which you then display in a debug field on your interface.