Vault API Documentation\Examples
Hello Gerrard,
Your question is kind of general, so I'll do my best here to provide some information on where to get you started and perhaps you can post more specific questions later, as they come up. It's good that you are aware of the SDK documentation and Doug's blog, JustOnesAndZeros. To begin with, it might be helpful to get a general feel for what's in the SDK and where to find it. A good place to start are the "Getting Started" articles in the SDK documentation. Those provide some useful information about how to set up an application using the Vault SDK as well as a general overview of Vault's architecture. From there, it might be good to get a feel for the different concepts in the Vault SDK. For this information, Doug's blog articles are useful. He has a "Concepts" category on his blog that contains some useful articles.
http://justonesandzeros.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/entities-and-behaviors.html and http://justonesandzeros.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/properties-in-vault-2011---part-1.html are some specific ones that I would suggest. Also, it's worth noting that Doug's blog has several additional code examples for download that are not packaged with the SDK itself. Finally, I would suggest going back to the SDK documenation and reading the "Web Services" article under the "API Reference" node. The whole SDK is grouped into various "services" and that article provides an overview of what services exist and what they do.
Now, on to your more specific questions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "access the document object", but I assume you mean how to get data about files from Vault? If that's the case, your starting point should be the DocumentService. It contains methods like GetLatestFilesByFolderId() and other useful methods for getting File objects. There are several examples of how to use the DocumentService in the various SDK samples and other samples on Doug's blog. For getting file properties, you'll want to use the PropertyService. Methods like GetProperties() and GetPropertyDefinitionsByEntityClassID() are useful in this regard. More information on them is in the SDK documentation. There are some other posts on the discussion boards here with examples of how to use the property service, as well as information on properties in general on Doug's blog and the knowledgebase articles in the SDK documenation. Accessing the thumbnail for a file is the same as accessing a file's properties because it is a file property. Additional information on how to render the thumbnail data can be found in Doug's blog article here: http://justonesandzeros.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/viewing-thumbnails.html. File references can get tricky, so an overview of how they work can be found on Doug's blog here: http://justonesandzeros.typepad.com/blog/2009/09/file-associations-part-1.html. The specfic methods you're likely to use are on the DocumentService. I would suggest looking at GetFileAssociationsByIds(). It can take a little digging at times, but a lot of information is out there. Good luck!
Regards
Daniel Dulzo
Software Engineer
Autodesk, Inc.
Gerrard,
You're doing well in terms of identifying the correct service methods to use and your general approach seems sound. I believe your error is because PropertyService.GetProperties() returns an *array* of PropInst objects and the error is telling you that it cannot convert from an array of object to a single object. Try changing the line with the error from:
Dim FilePropInst As Autodesk.Connectivity.WebServices.PropInst = m_docSvc.GetProperties({selectedFile.File.Id}, {ThumbnailProp.Id})
To:
Dim FilePropInst As Autodesk.Connectivity.WebServices.PropInst() = m_docSvc.GetProperties({selectedFile.File.Id}, {ThumbnailProp.Id})
Daniel Dulzo
Software Engineer
Autodesk, Inc.
