Download Specific Files From SFTP Based on User Input

Question

I'm trying to setup an Analytical App that can download specific files from an SFTP server based on the user input. The first step is to pull the file names from the SFTP folder by using the 'Download' tool with the Regex tool. Next, I concatenate the SFTP location name with the file names to be used later to download the file to a local folder.

Here is where I want to incorporate an Interface tool so the end-user can select a single file to download from the list of file names created in the prior step. However, the Interface tools only display the field names and not the rows from a single field. Is there a way to create an interface tool that allows the end-user to select a specific row from a single field based on the value?

The end goal would be to wrap this initial workflow into a series of other workflows using the Alteryx 'Conditional Runner' Macro. This workflow would be the initial downloading of a file, followed by the subsequent ETL workflows. Consolidating the workflows would allow the end-user to simply run 1 workflow that would first allow them to insert the file to be used, the  run all ETL processes in the background including the uploading of the end file, without interacting with any other resource.

Alteryx User Input.PNG

danilang · Accepted Answer

Hi @jackf

The thing to note here is that the values displayed in a any interface tool are determined before the workflow runs.  That's the reason why you can't show row values in interface tools, since the workflow has to run up to that point to generate the rows.

There are 2 accepted ways to get around this.

1. Cross tab your row values so that each becomes a column header.  This method won't work in your case because the file list is dynamic and the current values won't be available at the start of the worklfow

2. Use a chained app.  This is 2 apps that will run in sequence.  The first app will read the file list from the ftp site and store the results in a file.  The second app will use this file to populate the list presented to the user.  Since the file will be available before the second app runs, the list displayed in the drop down will be current

Dan