Legato is an extremely powerful tool that allows you take control of GoFiler by helping you to automate tasks and giving you new features. In addition to Legato, GoFiler also includes a command line API, allowing you to perform some tasks without fully opening GoFiler. You can combine these features together to have GoFiler run Legato scripts from the command line interface. This means that your possibilities are actually endless for what you can accomplish. Today we are going to discuss extending your control over GoFiler by using the Windows command line to communicate directly with Legato, allowing you to write scripts that can span multiple computers.

If you’re a long time reader of the developers corner, you may remember that last April I talked about using collaboration tasks in GoFiler through Legato. I shared a short script that read any tasks attached to a project upon opening a project and had Legato post the tasks in the Information View. Today I would like to present a modification to the script while introducing the email function. This script will also require a basic understanding of how HTML is formed and how CSS style data is stored in HTML.

Computers are amazing at creating things like photos, videos, papers, books, Powerpoint presentations, and the ultimate combination of all of the above: Grumpy Cat memes. An essential but often invisible part of computers is the storage space where all of this stuff goes: hard drives, network drives, and other physical storage space. These things are required to make your computer work the way it should, but they do a very good job at not calling attention to themselves. However, knowing that storage spaces exist and how you can interact with them can help you later on when you want to create programs and scripts that require certain types of storage to be available.

A few weeks ago we talked about what the clipboard object is and how you can get information off of the clipboard using Legato. This week we’re going to talk about putting information onto the clipboard using Legato by modifying one of our previous scripts.

Today we’re going to talk about one of the most commonly used but least commonly understood features of your computer: the clipboard. Everyone who regularly uses a computer regularly knows how much of a time-saver using copy and paste can be, and the value only goes up the more you use it. As a programmer, the amount of time that I save by moving code around can’t even be measured, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that. However, the inner workings of the clipboard are often times misunderstood. Today I will explain what the clipboard is and how to interact with it using Legato.

This week we’re going to talk about another client requested feature. Many EDGAR HTML documents end up referencing previously filed documents on the SEC’s EDGAR system. These documents are located at “https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/[document reference]”. Recently the SEC has migrated to only HTTPS, the secure hypertext protocol, and will redirect any requests for HTTP to HTTPS. However, the EDGAR system will still only accept links that reference “http://www.sec.gov/[etc]”. This causes some extra work if you are merely copying the link from a browser that is accessing the document on the EDGAR system, as the link will be copied as HTTPS. Today, we’re going to write a simple script that hooks into the validate function and lets you know if you have any HTTPS references as well as offer to fix them.

This week we are going to take a look at another client request to be able to remove multiple hyperlinks at the same time. In GoFiler there is a Remove Hyperlink function that will find where the caret currently is and if it is within a hyperlink it will remove the link. If the caret is located before or within an anchor/bookmark tag, the function will remove the anchor instead. However, if you have any text selected the tool gives the user a popup box and does not remove anything. So today we’re going to look at a simple script to hook into the Remove Hyperlink function, check if the user has text highlighted, and if so, remove all hyperlinks and bookmarks that we find in the highlighted section.

It’s nearly the day where we all stare at the clocks waiting for the time to strike midnight. I’m talking, of course, about New Year’s Eve. A new year means new beginnings and new adventures. So to count us down to midnight I created a Legato script to inform you how long it is until the new year.

Today we’re going to talk about logs. Legato provides a number of input and output (I/O) methods. The choice and style of I/O can vary as much as programmers and users. Logs are a convenient method of keeping and relaying data without establishing a complex data formatting regiment. They are useful for reporting information to a user (such as the number of instances a search and replace operation changed the text, for example, or whether or not there were errors in an procedure). They are also employed by many high-level application functions, such as a validation function indicating a list of possible notices, warnings, and errors.

Legato is a tool that allows you as a developer to do almost anything you want: change registry keys, move files around, and create or delete application setting files. Because there’s a great deal of power behind Legato, sometimes we want our scripts to be run by only certain people, perhaps, for example, only by company IT members. How do we make it so that a script can be deployed globally in a company but yet make it so that only some people can run it? The answer lies in using the power of Legato to secure our scripts.

One of the challenges of developing software in a Windows environment is dealing with user permissions. If a user can’t access a file, that can bring your script to a grinding (and sometimes unexpected) halt. Understanding what a user can and cannot do is crucial to avoiding this scenario and ensuring only files to which the user has access are available for reading, writing, and executing. Today we’re going to take a look at a look at how Legato can help you determine what permissions a user has and ensure those file permissions don’t inappropriately interfere with your script’s proper execution.

Today we’re going to be talking about the Edit Object. Every edit window in GoFiler that is based on text, as well as some that aren’t, interacts with an Edit Object. An Edit Object allows GoFiler to have a standardized way of communication with other windows, processes, and functions, as well as with the content of the edit window. Legato can work with an Edit Object in a couple of ways, allowing us as a developer to get data about what is showing on the screen as well as change some of that data.

This week we’re going to talk about using save and open file dialogs with Legato. While previous posts have used these functions in scripts, we’re going to go into a lot more detail about what you can do with these dialogs this time. This is going to be a fairly limited blog in terms of code as it is difficult to create example scripts of save and open file dialogs without doing a lot of extraneous coding. As a result, this blog will contain a number of small snippets of code that are all examples of using dialogs but not a full example script. If you would like a full script using a file dialog, check out this previous script which inserts text into an HTML edit window.

GoFiler features a number of collaboration tools for use in streamlining a filer or agent’s workflow. These include notifications, control functions, and account control. One of the more commonly used and powerful of these features is task tracking. Task tracking allows you to assign particular tasks to individual users and monitor their progress on those tasks. It also allows users to view the status of the tasks assigned to them and to other people. This is extremely helpful when dividing a complex project amongst different workers.

In this blog, we are going to take a look at the random number functions in Legato and create a real world, usable Legato script to aid in that daily, ever present quandary of what to order for lunch.