clipCopy() of folders fails (modules OK)

Hi all,

I'm trying to use the DXL APIs clipCut(), clipCopy(), clipPaste() to move/copy Item hierarchies or modules from one folder to another.

If I call these APIs passing in modules then everything works fine.
If I call them with folders (even a simple empty folder) the call to clipCopy() or clipCut() fails (and appears to zombie the DOORS.exe).
There's no error message returned from the call.

I've tried a lot of things to try and resolve this. The folder is created by the user account doing the clipCopy(), the item permissions looks fine, I've made sure there are no locks interfering but nothing seems to help.

The documentation indicates these APIs should operate on an Item not just Module.

The lack of an error message returned is not helping deduce why it won't work.

Any thoughts / help appreciated. I am guessing the DOORS client must use these APIs for folder copying. My overall aim here is to implement a recursive Item copy-paste / cut-paste feature.

Best regards,

Ian

(DOORS 9.2)

Re: clipCopy() of folders fails (modules OK)
GothSloth - Fri Oct 18 08:55:06 EDT 2013

Ian,

The functions return a string. On success the string will be  null. On failure the string will contain an error message. The first time I run the code below I get the results:

/Training Car Project
/Training Car Project
OK
 

The second time I run the code I get the results:

/Training Car Project
/Training Car Project
Module /Training Car Project/Architectural design is locked.
 

Hope that helps.

---code---

Folder thisFolder = current Folder
Item   thisItem

print fullName(thisFolder) "\n"

thisItem = item( fullName(thisFolder) )

print fullName( thisItem ) "\n"

string result

result = clipCopy( thisItem )

if( null(result) )
{
   print "OK\n"
}
else
{
   print result "\n"
}

Re: clipCopy() of folders fails (modules OK)
IanFallon - Fri Oct 18 09:24:14 EDT 2013

Hi. Thanks for replying. The symptom I see is the DOORS process not responding, so I don't even get a return string, null or otherwise!

I've been looking more into what's going on today. I don't think it's anything fundamentally not working now - I can get the code to run fine for folders _some_ of the time. I am beginning to suspect it's some side-effect of other DXL code somehow.

The code is in fact part of a set of Java unit tests (which launches a headless DOORS process to execute DXL).

The test suite with this test in passes if run by itself but if run with all the other unit tests (some of which make DXL calls although not on the same part of the test DOORS database).

So still a bit of a mystery. 

Re: clipCopy() of folders fails (modules OK)
llandale - Fri Oct 18 12:08:41 EDT 2013

Yes, I'm also thinking the folder must not already be open; which it is if you can see it in the LEFT pane or if one of its module's is open; or someone else is browsing therein.

I doubt you can copy-paste a folder into one of its sub-folders.

-Louie

Re: clipCopy() of folders fails (modules OK)
IanFallon - Tue Oct 22 07:04:27 EDT 2013

Thought I'd add a comment on here now I've figured out what was wrong! ...

It's all to do with the 'current' concept where you can set an Item to be the 'current' one in DXL.

Other tests were setting this which then caused the clipCopy() or clipCut() to fail. I tried setting current = null beforehand but that didn't work.

Solution: Setting current to be the root folder before doing the clipCopy() or clipCut() worked!