How to access file system within Alfresco (share)?

[johnmartin99]

How to access the file system within the Alfresco repository via share?

[jpotts]

No one is sure what you are asking. Can you elaborate please?

If you are trying to expose directories on the files system as if they were folders in the Alfresco repository, that's not how Alfresco works.

If you are trying to do something programmatically to access the file system from the API, you can use Java for that.

[johnmartin99]

Hi Jeff,

I want regular file system access within Alfresco repository (visible in Alfresco share). Do we have any module available with this functionality? If not, can you please provide some information on how I can build such a thing using Java.

[jpotts]

No, there is no module that provides that. What are the use cases that you would like to support with that? Are you expecting to be able to do everything with a regular file system that is external to the repo that you can do in Share to an Alfresco-managed folder and document?

[johnmartin99]

Hi Jeff,

I need to develop a module for Alfresco which allows for regular file system access
within Alfresco repository (visible in Alfresco share) honoring the rights a person has. The main objective is to
make the "external", regular file system searchable and part of a document site structure.

[jpotts]

The disqualifying requirement here is "searchable and part of a document site structure". For that to happen the content needs to be imported. It would be a lot of work to write a module that would simply refer to files on the file system, in-place, but have Alfresco (1) full-text index the content and (2) essentially have "virtual folders" within the normal Alfresco repo folder tree that were really pointing to external folders.

If you haven't already started using Alfresco and this is a must-have requirement, you might consider another product. Take a look at Nextcloud as one possibility.