Most Recently Created File Filtering With Directory and Dynamic Input Tools

Hi All-

Is there a way to use the Directory and Filter tools to select a Directory, look through the files, and then filter to only the most recently created file based on the file metadata.

My example below allows me to filter on the files that were created after 11/01/2015, but I want to access just the newest file.

Input

Output

Dynamic Processing

Accepted answers

chris_love

Hi

If you use a directory, followed by a sort on Creation Date, followed by a
Sample to take the first one record, this will give you what you need.

Chris

RodL

Not sure if the old XLS files behave the same way, but for XLSX files, I will add a Formula tool before the Dynamic Input that adds the Sheet Name to the Full Path from the Directory tool.

Alteryx is expecting to have the sheet name defined (you can see this when you have a regular Input tool connecting to an Excel file).

The expression in the Formula tool could be something like...[FullPath] + "|Sheet1$".

All comments

chris_love

Hi

If you use a directory, followed by a sort on Creation Date, followed by a
Sample to take the first one record, this will give you what you need.

Chris

MarshallG

Thanks, Chris. I knew it had to be an easy one, I just couldn't come up with the right terms to search for my question.

rmwillis1973

Similar problem as above - I have a folder which contains a number of zipped csv files. I can select the newest file only - that part works fine. I can create the sheet name field using the formula tool, which changes every week. But then when I try to use the dynamic input tool, it doesn’t extract out any data. It works ok, but just doesn't extract any data.

I created a new field called filepath2 which is [FullPath]+"|"+[sheet name]+"|". Again, there are no outputs from this.

What am I doing wrong here?

Select most recent zipped csv file.docx

RodL

Try using this expression...

[FullPath] + "|" + Replace([FileName], "zip", "csv")

The FullPath has the .zip file specified...the name after the pipe needs to have the .csv extension. (It's looking "inside" the .zip file for the real file name.)

Also, you don't need the second pipe in the expression like you appear to have.

What you want the FullPath string to look like is...

"C:\FileName.zip|FileName.csv"

Quick Links

This months top contributors

atcodedog05 19458

Qiu 15866

binu_acs 15708

MarqueeCrew 13708

apathetichell 13703