Retrieve email attachment timestamp

[kennysz]

Hi All,

I'm trying to retrieve a file with getappfileurl and am troubleshooting the timestamp suffix part. I have this formula:

CONCATENATE("https://www.appsheet.com/template/getappfileurl?appName={appName}-{appId}&fileName={foldername}/", TEXT(NOW(), "yyyyMMdd_HHmmss_fff"),".pdf")

But in the test output, I'm seeing that this only returns the current datetime and the milliseconds outputs as fff instead of the actual milliseconds. 

Test output:

https://www.appsheet.com/template/getappfileurl?appName={appNameHere}-{appId}&fileName={folderNameHere}/TEST FILE NAME20250407_132559_fff.pdf

How do I retrieve the datetime the email attachment is created so that I can retrieve the file through this URL? Looking forward to your support and response!

Best,

Kenny

[WillowMobileSys · Accepted solution]

I assume you are generating the PDF from an AppSheet Bot?   If so, there is not anyway to extract the timestamp from the resulting file within AppSheet.  You can simply disable the Timestamp.  There is a property on the Bot to do that.



If you still wish to include a timestamp on the file (to prevent duplicates) then you can generate and add your own timestamp as part of the Filename creation.  This allows you to KNOW what that timestamp is and utilize it in your link creation.

Also, it is worth mentioning, that AppSheet has a feature to load a folder of files into the app as a table source - e.g. a folder of generated PDF's.  This table provide meta-data about each file that includes the filename which can be extracted and used to create the link.  See link below.

I hope this helps!

Use data from Google Drive

[kennysz]

Yes, the attachment is generated from an AppSheet bot. I'm aware that the timestamp can be disabled but was curious if there was a way for me to retrieve the timestamp suffix that's auto generated by AppSheet.

I believe I'll need to generate and add my own timestamp to prevent duplicates. Would I need to create a virtual column to store the calculated timestamp using NOW() or something along those lines? Trying to think how I would extract and retrieve the timestamp portion for the file link creation.

Generating a table from folder of files does look interesting but I'm building an integration that's triggered when a new spreadsheet row is added. And I'd need to have columns about meta-data that I don't believe would exist in file meta-data. 

Thanks for your response!

[kennysz]

Nevermind I figured it out. I'll use another column as the custom timestamp suffix that I want. Thanks!