Zimlet doing attachments?

[Coilcore]

I'm trying to figure out a way to allow a our salespeople to attach files (.pdf's specifically) that do not actually live on the client filesystem, but instead live in in on an NFS mount point on the server.

The user interface seems like it could be done using a zimlet, where a the directory structure is returned from the a jsp in JSON form and handled by some kind of tree structure in DWT. Honestly I've not do this yet, because I want to make sure the next part is even posible.

Heres the next (harder) part, I need to figure out how to attach the selected file to an email as a normal attachment. I've looked at the documentation on file uploads and that might work to fill in some of the blanks, but its still got big holes (how do I put the reference into the email). There might be some other way, but none I can think of right now...

So the first and most basic question is, is this even posible with a Zimlet?

If it is, can someone recommend or lead me towards a decent solution?

[KevinH]

It's not a *simple* zimlet if you want to actually attach the PDF (rather than send a link) as you'll need to do the upload, and stick the part ref in the message as you send it. Lots of changing internal code with the Zimlet. The *easy* way would be to have a Zimlet allow you to browse for the PDF, download it to the local PC then attach it. If the PDF's are huge or your trying not to let the user's ever touch/see the actually PDF then this isn't the right solution.

[Coilcore]

I've considered making the user download the .pdf and doing the attachment themselves. Problem is that these are inbound faxes of things like contracts and other agreements so there tends to be a fairly significant number of potential documents, they can be fairly sizable, and they get passed around ALOT. Making a remote user have to download a fairly large pdf, just to reattach it would cause me to get a headache from the upset users.

The link idea might have something to it. I mean it would take some other changes to how we handle this, but the more I think about linking its got a whole raft of other issues that are also somewhat complicated. What if the file is moved or deleted after the email is sent (apparently not uncommon)? Icky.

I'm a little confused on how the existing Zimbra mail client does attachments, I was under the impression that all changes in the client were done via SOAP requests updating the current view. But the upload can't be done that way, there needs to be an POST of a form to get the file there (I'm guessing via AJAX and blocking until completion), then the resulting id is included in the SOAP request, which is different than the normal flow.

Could I do one jsp in the zimlet to select the file, and another jsp to do many of the same functions as the FileUploadServlet? DO jsps in Zimlets have access to the same Classpath/Context as a servlet?

[KevinH]

The client uses a hidden iframe to make the post to the server for file upload. Then takes the id and adds them to the soap request.

Yes the JSP's have access to the full classpath of the service webapp.