Displaying a hierarchical folder / file structure

[Mark Rae]

Hi,

Just looking for some advice and/or recommendations here.

Scenario is corporate private intranet, ASP.NET 2 on Win2K3S, SQL Server
2005, WinXP + IE6 on all client desktops.

Client has a folder structure on a separate file server (which the IIS box
can see) containing many corporate documents (in PDF format) arranged in
subfolders e.g.

<root>
Committees
Compliance
Meetings
20060901
Agenda.pdf
Minutes.pdf
20061001
Agenda.pdf
Minutes.pdf

etc - fairly standard corporate stuff.

They want to make these files available for viewing on the corporate
intranet in a way which resembles Windows Explorer as closely as possible
i.e.

page split into two panes
left pane contains hierarchical folder structure
clicking on a folder in the left pane displays that folder's contents
(subfolders and files) in the right pane
right pane's contents can be sorted by file / folder name, last written date
etc
clicking on a file in the right pane opens the associated PDF
file system is entirely read-only

I'm thinking this wouldn't present too much of a challenge with a
<asp:TreeView> in the left pane and a <asp:GridView> in the right pane, but
am interested to know if anyone has a better solution.

Any assistance gratefully received.

Mark

 

[John Timney \(MVP\)]

I'm not sure I wouod be looking to use the right pane to display the folder
contents when the treeview can do that anyway in a collpasable fasion, but
thats probably just a personal preference in that its an object less to work
with.

4guys has a good article that does much of what your after. Theoretically,
if you replaced the image control with an iframe you could potentially get
your PDF's to open in the same window and save yourself some work, or
perhaps create a thumbnail generator for PDF's and display that.

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/083006-1.aspx


Regards

John Timney (MVP)
VISIT MY WEBSITE:
http://www.johntimney.com

 

[Mark Rae]

I'm not sure I wouod be looking to use the right pane to display the
folder contents when the treeview can do that anyway in a collpasable
fasion, but thats probably just a personal preference in that its an
object less to work with.

I probably wouldn't either, but you don't sign my timesheets... ;-)

4guys has a good article that does much of what your after.
Theoretically, if you replaced the image control with an iframe you could
potentially get your PDF's to open in the same window and save yourself
some work, or perhaps create a thumbnail generator for PDF's and display
that.

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/083006-1.aspx

Yes, I've seen that - seems like an excellent starting point...

Thanks.