Running cmd/bat files via custom links

[cheesegrits]

I don't typically check my Conversations, as I get so many, pretty much all of them people just trying to jump the queue, or get free support. And by many, I mean a LOT. Like 20 or 30 or so a day. And I just get tired of responding with "I'll get to your forum post as soon as I can, in FIFO order", or "I'm sorry, but staff members don't have time to provide free support". So instead I use the half hour or so I save by ignoring them on answering more forum posts.

Yeah, to do stuff like Team Viewer access by appointment, helping with very custom code like this, would have to be a Pro thing. I hate to be all commercial about this, but we simply have to draw the line somewhere between Standard and Pro, otherwise ... well, yada yada.

Can you email the details, hugh dot messenger at gmail dot com? See how I cleverly disguised my address there? Spammers would NEVER think to look for that!

-- hugh

 

[austega]

Hi Hugh,

thanks for the quick reply.

I am about to post the email as requested with credentials etc.

I am happy to upgrade to Professional for a month, but am not sure how to do it. I found the FAQ on upgrading but it does not seem to be working as described, with no allowance being made in the price for the current ongoing standard subscription. What should I do? I could send a separate payment by Paypal. Or I could stop my recurring standard sub and commit to paying a month of Professional sub when the standard sub expires. Or you might have a better approach for payment?

David

 

[cheesegrits]

Haven't forgotten about this, just kind of slammed atm.

Not sure about the billing side of it, or how we handle upgrading in mid sub. I recall looking at some code to extend the end date of the original sub when the Pro sub expires, but I can't recall if we implemented that or not. Only other option is I bill you direct at my hourly rate of $100/hour, but you prolly don't want to do that. Losing a few days of Standard sub cost would probably be the cheaper option, or I'm happy to do it on the "honor system" you propose. Then if you don't, I just have to hunt you down and kill ya.

rob ?

-- hugh

 

[austega]

My preference is to run the risk of being hunted down . I know that my recent manual extension of a standard sub did not extend the existing term. At present I am currently 13 days through the period of a standard sub.

But I am prepared to switch now to the Professional if you wish - I know about the "joys" of managing online sub systems and am sure I will get value for money.

I am thinking longer term given my on again / off again use of Fabrik and the desire for quicker response when I need it, like now, that I should switch to manual (rather than recurring) subs at the Professional level - and subscribe as needed. I don't think I can afford ongoing Professional unfortunately .

 

[rob]

Just to confirm, if you have two subscriptions open in parallel then the initial one's end date will not be extended with respect to the second ones.

 

[austega]

<bump> in particular to check that nothing is waiting on me re the subs question...

 

[cheesegrits]

Nope, I'm just working through my issues list in FIFO order, got a few more Pro issues to handle before I can get to your stuff. And unfortunately, as running TeamViewer sessions is just by nature a more tedious and time consuming way of providing support, I need to set aside a longer time slot to do it, which makes it harder to squeeze in to a typical working day. I also just flat out don't like doing it. I don't like being logged in other people's machines, and I'm very hesitant to do it without having the person on a Skype session, to ride shotgun on the session.

I'm trying now, to make sure I can get in. Having to update to TV v10, though.

-- hugh

 

[cheesegrits]

Grrrrr. OK, well, I've remembered why I don't TV'ing in to sites. From silly little (but annoying) things ... like can't paste username / password in to Windows login, so have to type it by hand (and fat finger it three or four times!) ... to slightly scary things ... logged in, got dumped in to your Server Admin panel, asking me to configure RDP. Defaulted that. To sucky things like IE ... fired up IE, got asked to configure IE11, defaulted that. IE's JS debugging still sucks (like it won't undock the debugger on an RDP session, for some unknown reason) ... installed Chrome (so accepted their ToS on your behalf!). To me being blind as a bat annoyances - can't read the fonts 'cos of differences between screen sizes and resolution without putting it in "Original" scaling mode and scrolling around like crazy. Don't have LastPass installed so have to re copy and paste the credentials in J! every time it times out. Yada yada.

Anyway ... pet hates about doing support via TV aside ...

Not sure why, but the CDD filter was stuck in an infinite loop on page load, triggering an error somewhere in J!'s db query cache, even though caching seems to be disabled. Changed the filter "show" setting for the two CDD's to "all data" to avoid those lines of code (so it doesn't have to do a query on the main table as well as the joined table, avoiding the query that is blowing things up) so at least the page loads properly.

Once I got the page to load, hitting the plugin button was tossing an error about an illegal return - didn't seem to like the "return false;" where we eval your code inside a function. But after editing and saving that plugin one time, and putting a blank line after the return, it now seems to run. But I get:

The requested URL /library/Archive CD Books/AU2 New South Wales/NSW Directories/AU2119-1948s7 NSW Telephone Dir 1948-s7/AU2119-1948s7 NSW Telephone Dir 1948 - s7.pdf was not found on this server.

... but at least that's progress.

I'll come back tomorrow and have another look.

 

[austega]

Thanks Hugh. I'm no expert on TeamViewer so cannot really help your frustrations with it. I could pass any questions onto the server admin support.

I'll go in now and see what you have done and fix that URL data request error issue you found. And will report back here.

 

[austega]

Back again.

1. Thanks for fixing the CDDs. I don't remember changing the filter data setting on these elements, but am not denying doing so. To help my learning curve I take it that apart from this possibility you did not see anything else that I might have set inappropriately.

2. I have no idea about why a blank line added after the return: false; line in the PHP plugin would make any difference - but then this segment is a little bit of black magic to me in any case.

3. I have tested the url link info and found a few that were corrupt, including the one you tried. To avoid any wasted time at your end I have edited six records and have them displaying at the top of the table when no filters are set. The Description field for these six is prefaced by *x[-y]* where x indicates the LinkType and y is an optonal descriptor of the destination doc type for LinkType=1 resources. I have tested the LinkType 1 and 3 links of these six in a browser window on the server, so suggest you use these six for any testing you do. For my info, should a relative link ../library/etc work here or only absolute links? For the four LinkType =1 and 3 test records they are currently absolute links.

Thanks in advance - David

 

[austega]

Hugh,

also noting that I was and am not able to get the the php plugin icon link to work - in either Chrome or IE. No response from system to clicking on the icon, apart from the adjacent checkbox being ticked.

However when I enable Debugging in the Joomla Global Configuration | System tab, the LinkType 1 and 3 test resources do open their respective resources/external sites. The LinkType 2 test resources continue to give no response apart from the checkbox being ticked.

I hope this helps diagnosis. I have no idea of why that would make a difference. Does it indicate some form validation that is bypassed in Debug mode?

In addition even when it works there is no immediate user interface feedback to show that it is working and the delay I am experience makes me wonder if some users would give up. Is there any way that some sort of indication of "please wait, its getting your resource" could be given.

I have left it with Debug turned off - feel free to change this as appropriate.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

David