Environment Variables For Input tool

Question

Hi,

Super simple problem.  I had to resurrect an old desktop project.  I had taken out of my workspace, zipped it, jammed it somewhere for storage in hopes of never having to think about it again.  A year later I needed to be able to run it.  The trouble is though, I had created another  project in a directory with the same name, so when I brought it back, I had to go through and change all the input tools to point through to a new directory.

It's really not the end of the world.  but in the event that this should occur again, is there a way to make the path on the input tool more dynamic.  Like [this_workflow_directory]/data/myinputfile.csv] or something?

I've googled through the forums, checked tool mastery and haven't seen anything that looks to apply to what i'm trying to do.  I did see something in the InputTool example that shows the path as "..\..\..\data\OneToolData\State Populations.csv" but I don't recognize that ..\ thing.

AngelosPachis · Accepted Answer

Hi @danloz ,

I would suggest building your projects with a proper structure, meaning a main folder which contains inside everything the workflow needs to run.

Create that master folder and put the workflows in there. Then create a sub-folder in that master folder for Inputs, Outputs, Macros and any supporting material. Then open your workflow and re-point all inputs and outputs to read/write to the inputs and output subfolders you have created earlier.

Last step before you save your workflow, is to change the workflow dependencies.

In the window that will pop-up, select all relative

Now, if you want to move the project, you can zip it or move it as a whole. Everything will remain intact in your workflow and you would be able to run it by any device in the future.

Hope that helps,

Angelos