Jason Silver

Friday, May 7th, 2004

Automatic PAD Files

I discovered something pretty cool today-- when submitting software it's much faster if you have a PAD file created with all your data in it. You simply point another site to your PAD file, and all the form fields get automatically filled in: name of program, name of programmer, company address, file size, description, keywords, etc. The list goes on and on. Not having to type this stuff in on every site makes a huge difference!

I created a couple of PAD files (for NotationMachine and ServiceBuilder) using a Windows program, and it worked like a charm. It got me thinking too... what if I made the FileCABINET software I wrote automatically generate PAD files!

It meant I had to learn a little more XML, but I was up for the challenge, and it paid off! Now every file in my downloads on Intelliscript.net has it's own PAD file, and it's created automatically every time the XML is called for. You simply add the script's ID number to the URL followed by .xml and FileCABINET does the rest.

For example, FileCABINET's unique ID is 23, so

http://www.intelliscript.net/FileCABINET.pl/23.xml

I'm starting to feel a little cocky! ;-)

~Jason