Invoking LiveCycle ES Using Watched Folders

An administrator can configure a network folder, known as a watched folder, so that when a user places a file (such as a PDF file) in the watched folder, a configured service operation is invoked that manipulates the file. After the service performs the specified operation, it saves the modified file in a specified output folder. A watched folder is configured to be scanned at a fixed rate interval or with a cron schedule, such as every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon.

Users can drag a file or folder that contains multiple files from their desktop and drop it into an assigned watched folder, having them processed by the configured service. Similarly, a watched folder can also be used as an integration mechanism between services and a client application, where invocation requests to services are initiated by placing a file or a folder into a watched folder. The files will be processed in the order in which they arrive.

If the job contains more than one input file, the user must create a folder outside of the watched folder hierarchy containing all required files. This new folder should include the input files (and optionally a DDX file if required by the process). Once the job folder has been constructed, it should be copied into the watched folder’s input folder.

When the input is a folder and the output consists of multiple files, LiveCycle ES creates an output folder with the same name as the input folder and copies the output files into that folder. When the output consists of a document map containing a key-value pair, such as the output from an Adobe LiveCycle Output ES process, the key will be used as the output file name.

The output file names that result from an endpoint process cannot contain characters other than letters, numbers, and a period (.) before the file extension. LiveCycle ES converts other characters to their hexadecimal values.

Client applications pick up the result documents from the watched folder result folder. Process errors are logged in the watched folder failure folder.

Watched folders can be chained together so that a result document of one watched folder is the input document of the next watched folder. Each watched folder can invoke a different service. By configuring watched folders in this manner, multiple services can be invoked.

For information about creating a watched folder source, see Administering LiveCycle ES at http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_lc_administration. To learn more about watched folders, see How Watched Folder works.

Current page: http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/es/sdkHelp/programmer/sdkHelp/invokingWatchedFolders.29.1.html

Comments

broniusm said on Dec 18, 2007 at 2:36 PM :

Typo:

At the bottom of this page, the hyperlinked url text reads:
http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_lc_administration
but incorrectly points to:
http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_lc_overview

smacdonald2008 said on Dec 19, 2007 at 5:23 AM :

Thank you for your feedback - we will correct that link.