At the moment it is only possible to read the contents of a file. Will you extend the functionality of the API to write access in the future? Or will you implement an Import from XML function or something else? And if you do so can you estimate a date?

I'm asking because i have to fill out many annotations and it would be fine if this could be done automatically. So I'm thinking of designing the site visual with Axure RP Pro, fill out some basic annotations then save the file and fill out the rest of the widgets properties with a self written external program but i want to save these changes back to the RP file format. And i think at the moment this is not possible so it would be nice if you implement API functionality to save changes back to RP file format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do plan to add write capabilites to the API, but I unfortunately I cannot provide you with a date.

Would a grid view of the annotation data that could be edited inside of Axure RP help to address what you are trying to accomplish?

With grid view you mean a kind of matrix where i can see all widgets that are on a form with all anotations?

for example something like this?

	Widget 1	Widget 2	Widget 3	Widget 4
Annotation 1
Annotation 2
Annotation 3
Annotation 4
Annotation 5

 

I think that would be a great improvement in usability because it would be possible to enter annotations on a central point and i don't have to click on every widget to enter the annotations.

Exactly... if something like this existed, would you still use the API to write directly to the files?

The API write would be still a nice feature to automate things but the matrix would be a very nice feature because it would save a lot of time to fill out all the annotations!

I agree.  We have a requirements database with 2000+ entries and we'd like to incorporate the text of related requirements into a custom Axure annotation property so that we can have the requirement(s) incorporated in the generated spec.  Without write access, we will need to generate the docx and/or html and go parse through that to update the requirement number with the associated text.  It would be much simpler to use the APIs to read the requirement numbers from a custom annotation property, update the requirement text in a second custom annotation property, and run the generation (running the generation programmatically would be nice as well).

Hi etlerch,

Thanks for describing your process. Which RM tool are you using or is it homegrown?

Hi,  I'd like to weigh in on this discussion.  I've used Axure on a fewof 1-off projects over the last few years with great success.  I'm now employed with a company with 25+ developers working on numerous independant development tasks (small and large).

We currently use a standard word document to create a sepcification for signoff.  This a standard layout regardless of the size or complexity of the task.  As most tasks involve some sort of UI element to it, we are looking at options to incorporate the following:

• standard layout/section
• UI screens and/or components
• Flowcharts
• Database layouts
• Other text-based sections to describe test-strategy, benefit, resources, etc.
• Output to CHM and/or HTML instead of word document

We'd like to incorporate all the sections of our current spec (requirements, analysis, test strategy, benefits, etc) into a single Axure RP file for each task.

While we can use a 'template' rp file for the basic structure, we'd like to have an easy way to add some of the more verbose text to the rp file.  As this text is already captured in a task management system, we'd like to be able to get those text sections and automatically add them to a certain textbox/table/text area/panel/etc on specific pages.

Does the API support this idea or is there an easy way to do this so that the developers don't copy/paste into the wrong sections/pages?

Hi greg,

There isn't any easy way to do this with the API. It would require building a custom specification generator that would use the Axure RP API to gather data in a .rp file and use an API to the task management system to combine that data into the specification. Not impossible, but not a small effort.

We'll think about what it would take to support something like this in the built-in specification generator.