Hi Stefan!

In the user manual under misc it says this: "The elog program makes it possible to submit logbook entries automatically by the system or from scripts. In some shift logbooks this feature is used to enter alarm messages automatically into the logbook. "

Ok what am trying to do is have all messages update (somehow) without the user entering each record. I want my alarm system to be able to keep-up2-date on the expirations, by simply updating the 'date' fields I have in the logbooks (JS). I am getting used to JavaScript, and have all of that working as far as the actual 'alarms' are concerned. But they are useless if the dates are stagnent (ie. not updateing at least once per day).

So can you refer me to the 'shift books' you reference above, so I can understand how to write the code necessary? I've spend much time searching the net on this and experimenting, so I did try to find out before I posted. I believe using a combination of the Elog Utility, with a dedicated 'start page' that is mostly JS, will be part of the solution...

Thanks soo much for your help and awesome creation! :)

John

Dear John,

I am a user of the elog system and no developer, so no complete answer guaranteed.

The quote of the manual describes the case, if e.g. an hardware component discovers a failure and the connected PC makes an automatic (new) entry to the elog. Probably modifying an existing one.

I have small concerns on your solution. The description of your alarm system sounds the other ways around, as you are doing something, depending on the elog entries. Based on your statement on JS and dedicated start page, you want to do it on client-side and not on the server. Where I can see the issue, if there is not client, then there is no alarm. As you want to change the date of the entries, I believe, you want to reuse the same entries multiple (infinite?) times instead of creating new ones. The later would be the style of an logging software like elog.

As far as I know, the Date attribute is special and cannot be changed by submitting something to the elog server. as this would make "Restrict edit time" useless. You can try it with this in your config:
Subst on edit Date = $date
Making an entry and edit it afterwards. The entry time stays the same.
If you really want to use this attribute, you have to do some scripting to the actual saved .log files, but this is not intended as I believe.

What you can do, is using an alternative attribute like "MDate" with the config:
Subst MDate = $date
Subst on edit MDate = $date
This will update every time you edit the entry.
Then you probably want to add something like this to your config
List display = ID, MDate, Author, ...

Or "Update" using the duplicate function on the old entry, where you want to change the date, creating a new one with the same content.
Or "Update" using the reply function to create a new entry, referring to the old one.

I hope, I could help.
Best wishes,
Sebastian

Hi Sebastian!

Thank you soo much for your kind response. You are correct in all of your assumptions as to what I want to do (or not do!). Everything should be on clients side, and I want the date to be updated in each record, daily, or hourly, in order to allow the 'alarm' system I created to be able to give notice (a pop up ,or whatever) when the time as passed, for whatever time/date the user set the alarm for.

I believe this has been asked in general in the past and  suggetions were to have the data updated in onther program (spreadsheet) or whatever, as you implied, by changing the database directly (log files). This is not the way I want to do, even though I realize it would accomplish this task. I want to just use Elog and probably JS.

I will try your ideas and when I am done (successful or not!) I will report my findings back here :)

John

When I use the email notification for an entry with images in the text, it seems the email server cannot retrieve the image. When I inspected the URL of the image it went to the login page.

Is that because the logbook has a password config that the access from the URL of the image needs authentication?    Or I am just using the image upload the wrong way .

First thing you want to try is to upgrade elog to the last version. Older versions have problems in including images.

Then you want to check the "Email Format" in your elogd.cfg configuration file. Only if "16" is included there, then attachments are sent as email attachments and images will be included in yoru email. If not, only a link of the image is included in your email, and you correctly realized that you then cannot view the image because your email client does not knwo how to authenticate itself at the elog server.

Stefan

Same problem here, in version 3.1.3.   It would be very nice if this worked.

For conditional attributes, you have to use Options, not ROptions. Maybe I will implement that one day, but only if I will have plenty of time...

Hi Al; if I understand your situation correctly you want to access Elog db (logbooks) via another way. There are many ways depending on your knowledge, type of work needed, and ease of use. I have found that accessing whatever I need via Elog gui is satisfactory in many situations-- by simply exporting. THEN take the raw csv/xml  file and manipulte it more easily from there. There are MANY free web sites that will take your data then, and put it in still another format that you choose (usually manipulating the rows/columns to your liking or doing mail-merge type work on your data). BTW WPS (Windows Office clone) is awesome at further 'mail-merg'  techniques. THEN at that point you may have close to what you are trying to accomplish. I've also used PHP alot in this type of situation and have replicated Elog's data format for it's db (logbooks)..; so PHP is great in this maner, although of course it takes time to 'get-it-right' if you are not well versed in it. If you go into detail more of what type of format you want as the finalized product, maybe  more suggestions will be made.

Happy belated New Years everyone,

John