Do I understand that at the moment the only way to retrieve attachment
data via the API is to download an XML representation of >all< of the
attachment meta and actual data each and every time?
Say I have an expense, bank account entry or bill and I wish to
retrieve the associated attachment. How would this be possible if I
don’t have the attachment’s ID?
Also the attachment ID is not returned in the attachments XML so even
if I wanted to requery the attachment, I can’t (unless I requery all
the attachment data from scratch).
Alternatively, would it be possible to have the attachment ID appended
as an element to the Expense, Bank Account Entry or Bill - rather than
the other way around? (So one expense has one attachment. One bank
account entry has one attachment. All the attachment_id’s can be read
from the Expense or Bank Account Entry or Bill classes).
In summary: As I’m totally unable to retrieve singular attachments one
at a time (as I do not ever know the attachment’s ID) I am forced into
retrieving ALL the attachments (including data) in the one event. This
is likely to be catastrophic for performance on my software as well as
on FreeAgent’s servers.
Can it be possible to handle the attachments in the same way as
clients, invoices, time slips, etc?
If not, can it be possible to retrieve all the attachments WITHOUT the
data but WITH the attachment ID’s? Therefore I can request all the
META data for every single attachment in one go, but without the
Base64 encoded string content - and instead request the attachment by
ID as required?
First point: The /attachments resource does stipulate that a
element containing base64 encoded binary data for each attachment will
be returned.
Fixed
Second point: The /expenses resource also needs fleshing out in the
docs.
I’ll update this once the release has gone out.
Regarding requirements - yes, almost all the boxes are ticked. I’d
like to be able to GET the Bank Account Entry resource too please then
I’ll be 95% there
Do I understand that at the moment the only way to retrieve attachment
data via the API is to download an XML representation of >all< of the
attachment meta and actual data each and every time?
No binary data is sent when accessing the ‘/attachments/’ resource.
You access the binary data directly via the temporary URL which is
specified in the ‘Location’ header of the HTTP response.
Also the attachment ID is not returned in the attachments XML so even
if I wanted to requery the attachment, I can’t (unless I requery all
the attachment data from scratch).
The ID is indeed missing from the Attachment XML – a rather large
oversight. We will ensure this is present in tonight’s software
update, so the new XML will look something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
application/x-pdf
filename.pdf
74661
A description
123456
Expense
Alternatively, would it be possible to have the attachment ID appended
as an element to the Expense, Bank Account Entry or Bill - rather than
the other way around? (So one expense has one attachment. One bank
account entry has one attachment. All the attachment_id’s can be read
from the Expense or Bank Account Entry or Bill classes).
This is already the case. If you query a specific Expense resource
which has an attachment, for example, the XML response will have the
following format:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
2008-10-21T00:00:00Z
3 Years
External Hard Drive
1
0
Computer Hardware
-130.87
true
123456
0
0.0
0.4
0.4
17.5
0.0
7
application/x-pdf
filename.pdf
74661
A description
1234
Expense
(Note: the ‘id’ attribute on in the above example will
only be present after tonight’s update)
Once the update to add the id has been released, do you think the
Attachments API will fulfill you basic requirements? Let me know what
you think
This is absolutely fantastic news. In which case, the documentation
needs updating, see below:
First point: The /attachments resource does stipulate that a
element containing base64 encoded binary data for each attachment will
be returned.
Second point: The /expenses resource also needs fleshing out in the
docs.
However, your reply is absolutely perfect and spot-on. If it’s already
there, I’ll take a look. I should be making my first proof of concept
“receipts” tonight at the latest. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Regarding requirements - yes, almost all the boxes are ticked. I’d
like to be able to GET the Bank Account Entry resource too please then
I’ll be 95% there
First point: The /attachments resource does stipulate that a
element containing base64 encoded binary data for each attachment will
be returned.
Fixed
Second point: The /expenses resource also needs fleshing out in the
docs.
I’ll update this once the release has gone out.
Regarding requirements - yes, almost all the boxes are ticked. I’d
like to be able to GET the Bank Account Entry resource too please then
I’ll be 95% there
