Hi all together,

I struggle a lot with the following problem:
I try to prefill certain attributes with the value of exactly the same attribute in the last entry made in the same logbook.

I know I have to go with Preset, tried a view hours and searched the forum but i didn't find a thing. Am I overlooking a flag, an option or whatever, or is there just not such a functionality (which I dont believe)?

I thought about:
Preset Test_Attribute = $Test_attribute
Preset Test_Attribute = Re:$Test_attribute
Preset Test_Attribute = $shell(Command to somehow get last entry and this attributes value)
Not succesful though.

I would be very thankful for help, thanks in advance.

Sure, attributes can be shown multi-line, but they cannot be stored in the elog internal database. The database is a very old design and only allows for single line attributes. Just look at a YYMMDDa.log file and you will see that. I would have to change the database format to somethign more advanced like XML, but that would take me a couple of weeks or months.

Soooorrryy! ;-)

You would have to do that on the scrip level. Use "curl" to search a logbook. Like following URL would search for all entries in this forum where you are the authoer, then return the entries in CSV format:

https://elog.psi.ch/elogs/Forum/?mode=CSV1&Author=k%F6rner

Then you can parese this CSV file and extract the entry ID, which you can pass to the elog client to submit a new entry to the other logbook.

Stefan

Hi,

in our application I want to have, let's say in the simplest case, two logbooks. One as a database of samples we fabricated and one as a logbook for measurements. When a measurement on a sample is done and an entry is submitted to the 2nd logbook, I want to automatically edit or reply to the corresponding entry in the 1st logbook. For example I want to append a line in the free text field to have a full log of what happened to a sample there. We reference our samples with a unique auto-generated ID in both logbooks. Is is somehow possible to search the 1st logbook for that ID or any other attribute and obtain the elog entry ID since the elog client will need that ID for editing an entry?

I am not Stefan, but maybe I can add to this issue.

Personally I think it is not a good way to dump all the information into the text field and try to let the server parse it.
This could be archived more simply by using e.g. the python elog scripts or using the elog command tool to directly submit well structured elog entires.

As you have mentioned you could use the "execute new|edit|delete" commands to do the things you want to do.
Let the called script fetch the elog entry and alter it in the way you like and resubmit the entry.
(You have to make sure to don't generate a endless loop and you have to proably have to use a forwarding script as the elog "execute" command waits for finished execution).
This way you don't touch the 1500 characters limit of passing $text to the execute command.

Also the point "filling an attribute X with free text" needs some kind of (extended) parsing, which isn't possible with the subst command.
In our elog we such an attribute X, which is in some conditions filled with a set of other attributes and on other conditions just a normal input field, so the user could type custom text in.

"fill an attribute automatically with the character length of the text" could be done with the above mentioned execute command or it could be done on the clientside (e.g. browser using javascript or if automatically generated by a script, then directly by the script)

I hope it helps to build our application.
Best wishes,
Sebastian

While the input widget of text attributes is a single line, they can easily be multi-line in the display - when you use HTML at least.
And of course the user can parse the text field and generate a single line, if he wants to.
If you leave it to me, I'll create wonderful applications to that feature :-)

Please? ;-)

$text is the full body text and can go over many lines. Since attributes are restricted to single lines, it's not possible to substitute them with the body text.

Stefan

Hi Stefan,

I've just tried to read the $text with subst into another field and failed.
It looks like $text is only available for the execution of shell scripts in the "execute new|edit|delete = <script>" command.

Could that be added? I can think of a multitude of applications:

• In my case I want to fill an attribute X either with free text or generated from other fields. The list view will show just X and not how it was generated.
• I could fill an attribute automatically with the character length of the text.
• I could parse the text in a shell script and set other attributes according to the content.

Thank you for considering it.

Cheers, Andreas