Cycling 74 » Topic: Auto-saving coll to external file

Auto-saving coll to external file

lchoi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:38:02 +0000

Could someone please help me shed some light on a problem?

I’m seeking a way for the “coll” object,

- to read a file when loading (which is no problem), and then

- to write to that same file whenever “coll’s” contents are modified and

- to have it do this automatically without requiring user interaction.

This s for an interface and it needs to be transparent to the user. In other words, the user will neither see the Save As dialog, nor the Save changes dialog when the patcher is closed.

I’ve followed the steps in Tutorial 37 on Data Structures carefully, but had no success. I’m still unable to get the external file to update automatically. This seems like it ought to be simple, but it’s got me stumped.

Any help offered would be greatly appreciated.

Lucky

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Roth — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:05:46 +0000

You should be able to use the “writeagain” command to tell [coll] to save changes to the currently opened file. You can have this happen automatically every time the data is changed by passing the storage commands through a trigger object setup like

[t writeagain l]

with both outlets connecting to [coll] so first your list passed to target gets passed to [coll] from the right outlet to store data then “writeagain” is sent from the left outlet to save the file.

P.S. in case it doesn’t come through in the font, the second argument listed for trigger is L for list, NOT i.

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Kasper — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:47:32 +0000

>Could someone please help me shed some light on a problem?
>
>I’m seeking a way for the “coll” object,
>
>- to read a file when loading (which is no problem), and then
>
>- to write to that same file whenever “coll’s” contents are modified and
>
>- to have it do this automatically without requiring user interaction.
>
>This s for an interface and it needs to be transparent to the user.
>In other words, the user will neither see the Save As dialog, nor
>the Save changes dialog when the patcher is closed.
>
>I’ve followed the steps in Tutorial 37 on Data Structures carefully,
>but had no success. I’m still unable to get the external file to
>update automatically. This seems like it ought to be simple, but
>it’s got me stumped.
>
>Any help offered would be greatly appreciated.

don’t have my patch here, but i have done something like this, using
zl join, dump, flags 0 1 and closebang

works very well

(soory not to be more precise, but it should help)

best

kasper
–
Kasper T. Toeplitz
noise, composition, bass, computer

http://www.sleazeArt.com

http://www.myspace.com/sleazeart

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

lchoi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:05:42 +0000

Thanks Kasper,
I should clarify that the updated data needs to be current after the user closes and reopens the program. Here’s what I tried with your suggestion, but the external data file does not seem to update. I’ve attached my example. What am I doing wrong here?

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

lchoi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:08:54 +0000

Sorry Roth,
I meant for the last message to be addressed to you. Thanks for your help.

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

lchoi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:13:41 +0000

Hi Kasper,

Sorry for my confusion in addressing my recent replies. Thanks for your tip. Can you tell me, where does the data get saved? Was it still there after you closed (without having to save changes) and reopened the program?

Lucky

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Roth — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:23:18 +0000

Quote: Lucky Choi wrote on Sun, 20 April 2008 19:08
—————————————————-
> Sorry Roth,
> I meant for the last message to be addressed to you. Thanks for your help.
—————————————————-

No problem, I was already looking at your patch when the next message hit my inbox :)

This patch worked for me so I am a little stumped. I think I have figured out the problem. “writeagain” tells [coll] to save the current file. When you first opened your patch, you probably got the error “coll: no file mydata” because that file was not yet in your search path–at this point, there is no file loaded in [coll]. When you double click a [coll] that has no file, it just opens a blank text file in the Max text editor. Once you saved this file, this did nothing to change the fact that [coll] did not open the file when you changed the patch; because of this you should have seen a save dialogue appear the first time you tried to store data in [coll].

If the text file existed when you first opened the patch, or if you saved it in some other method after opening the patch (e.g. using the “write” or “writeagain” commands) it should have worked without an issue. From the sounds of your project this shouldn’t be a problem since double-clicking [coll] to “Save as…” is probably the least transparent method to the user (I am guessing the text file will already exist when the user opens the patch).

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

lchoi — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:40:07 +0000

Thanks Roth,

Brilliant! It works.

I simply reopened my example and voila.

Thanks for reminding me that the connection to the external file happens when the object is loaded.

Lucky

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Kasper — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:13:39 +0000

>Hi Kasper,
>
>Sorry for my confusion in addressing my recent replies. Thanks for
>your tip. Can you tell me, where does the data get saved? Was it
>still there after you closed (without having to save changes) and
>reopened the program?
>

of course it’s there

that’s what the message [flags 1 0 ] is for: banging it at closebang
saves the contents of the coll with the patch (and not in a separate
file)

this way, when you open the patch all data is inside and the dump
message at loadbang lets me know how many lines of data i have
inside, so i can write in the next line

basically, in your case, the only thing the user has to do (in order
to keep new data) is to press a BANG (or some similar action)

best

kasper

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Stefan Tiedje — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:39:39 +0000

Kasper T Toeplitz schrieb:
> that’s what the message [flags 1 0 ] is for: banging it at closebang
> saves the contents of the coll with the patch (and not in a separate file)

This is only usefull if you have Max, in the runtime version there is no
option to save the patch where the data is included. Thus for users of a
patch who don’t own Max, the only way is to save it to an external file.
But this can be completely automated…

Stefan

–
Stefan Tiedje————x——-
–_____———–|————–
–(_|_ —-|—–|—–()——-
– _|_)—-|—–()————–
———-()——–www.ccmix.com

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

theMandoe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:31:14 +0000

Stefan Tiedje wrote on Mon, 21 April 2008 02:39

Kasper T Toeplitz schrieb:
> that’s what the message [flags 1 0 ] is for: banging it at closebang
> saves the contents of the coll with the patch (and not in a separate file)

Stefan

–
Stefan Tiedje————x——-
–_____———–|————–
–(_|_ —-|—–|—–()——-
– _|_)—-|—–()————–
———-()——–www.ccmix.com

Hi there.

Bumping the thread. I need to use the coll object to save various types of variables to an external file, so that amplitude levels, fades and so on will be stored and loaded using the patch in a runtime enviroment. I’ve been all over the tutorials, but i can’t seem to get it right. Help is appreciated

Best regards
Jacob

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Luke Hall — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:57:48 +0000

Have a look at the “file_i/o” subpatch in the [coll] help file. The “read”, “write” and “writeagain” messages are probably what you are after. If you’re still having trouble then perhaps post a patch which demonstrates what you are trying to achieve.

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

theMandoe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:09:56 +0000

thereishopeforus@hotmail.com wrote on Wed, 18 November 2009 17:57

thx. Looks as if i’ve been staring at the help/reference file for too long. It works now. But how do i sort the stored data? I need a loadbang to activate the coll object, so that eight different values will be sorted out to eight different objects. I’m trying different things with the route object (ex. routing to $1 objects), but no luck so far…

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Roman Thilenius — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:10:26 +0000

i would suggest to use a fixed path for things like that.

implement a folder at “:specialfolder:” in your root maxpath
(i.e. right beside the app) and use this folder as default
or better as only write adress for “:mydumbcoll.txt”

/MaxMSP/specialfolder/mydumbcoll.txt

otherwise files might be written to the last used location,
often set by third party extensions of the operation system.

-110

Re: Auto-saving coll to external file

Luke Hall — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:16:04 +0000

You could try “dump”-ing the contents and using [route] to send them to specific destinations based on a keyword in the [coll]. Or you could use [forward] in conjunction with [receive] instead.

– Pasted Max Patch, click to expand. –