Does anyone know of any articles, websites, examples, etc. that detail how to have a webpage spawn an upload process on a client machine (much like windows update does but as an upload and not a download) which will check for files on the client system and upload them as needed to the server?
The idea is for the client to just hit the website and the website will fire off a process to pull files off the client machine. I figure that I could do this via a client service app interfacing with a webservice, but I was hoping that there's an easy way to handle this without a local application on the client. That's what's making this a little hard to think through... no client application. I want the user to hit a webpage and then have a process fired that scans the client machine (a specific directory) for files. If they are there, I want the process to copy the file (or maybe just the data within) up to the server. Then the server application will open the file and process the data into the database. What I am trying to do is to remove a manual upload process that the user has to perform. What they do is use a Word template and enter data. Then they email the Word document to another user that enters/copies the data into the server database. What I want to do is to create a process where they create the Word document and save it in a given directory and then hit a webpage for uploading. The webpage scans the user's machine and uploads any files it finds. Then a service app parses the Word document and updates the database. If anyone has some ideas or suggestions, please let me know. I'm pretty sure I can get this to work but the architecture is a little odd and I am not sure if there are better ways to handle this. I have considered that security may be an issue and I need to think that through. I have also considered that if I did write a client app, that I could create some sort of smart client that would auto-updated the client app as new versions are released. I'm trying to avoid that if I can, as the client has some concerns about his customers and a client application running on their machine. I think a web-based version would be a much better fit, if there are not significant issues in regards to doing this. Another option would be to create a service app for the client machine that monitors a given directory. Then when files are added to the directory, the service app would parse the data and hit a webservice to update the server's database. I'm not sure about that either, as the client wants to have the ability to run this on a PDA as well. Are there any concerns about writing .Net Windows Services for mobile apps? Any information or suggestions would be very much appreciated. If there is a much easier way to handle this, I am open to ideas. Best regards, Jon =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
