You can use the STRPCCMD by using any of the following APIs.
QCMDEXEC, QCAEXEC, or QCAPCMD.

This is just a brainstorm idea, I have not done this exactly:
You can get a list of the PDFs from the IFS and list the full path on the display.
System i Access 5250 has a Hot-Spot option under preferences where you can get it to recognize URLs. It makes it so a click of the URL will open your browser to the link. You need to define the PC browswer under Preferences | Browser.
So, if you can turn your IFS folder into a URL (HTTP server included on the IBMi for free?), this might work. Sorry, I don’t have time right now to test this out on my own.

These are historical data.

How many documents are there? And how often does the list change?

For example, if you had a static list in a file, would refreshing it daily be sufficient to keep it up to date?

Tom

Hi Tom,
Thanks for your and all other responses.

We have a folder for each month and the number of documents will be static within each folder – no daily changes. For the next month a new folder is created. Its a monthly job.
I need to be able to display the keys for the docs on a subfile, enable the user to select and then display the seectedpdf on PC.
Regards.

Because these will be displayed by a PC, maybe they would be listed better on a PC.

I was wondering if a .HTML document might be created on a regular (daily?) basis. The document could be as simple as a list of links to each PDF. Instead of listing the PDFs in a subfile and then sending a command to the PC to display a selected PDF, you might just send a command to the PC to open the .HTML document.

There are elements of STRPCCMD that can be tricky. I was wondering if an alternative to creating and working via a subfile might be acceptable.

Tom

Note that it’s not necessary to start nor use a HTTP server. URLs can be coded as file:// links to have the browser load them directly without using the http: protocol. There are a couple potential quirks in how the URLs must be structured; but if the PCs are going to be expected to load PDFs out of the IFS anyway, those quirks ought to be easy to handle.

Tom

I need to be able to display the keys for the docs on a subfile…

What is “keys for the docs”? Does that just mean that each doc has an identifier that the user will recognize?

Tom

Hmmm

We do this all the time, every day, thousands of times a day – both PDf and .rtf type documents.
the document objects are stored in many folders, analogous to your ‘monthly’ structure.

In our case the document path is stored in a file – there are ‘random’ new documents scattered across the structure each day, so we maintain the list.. Some descriptive data – like your ‘keys? – is stored as well. Aa subfile over this data, with the usual selection/positioning/filtering, drill down blah blah gives a user visibility. selecting to view the content of an object cause the function to identify its type, check authority, and then run STRPCCMD with whatever is appropriate.

Access to the list of objects in a folder is programtically very straightforward, using tools for reading folders and document names – a quick web search will throw up lots of bits of code. We used Scott Klements toolkit, which is well documented, and merely needed to take examples of code in his ‘manual’ and stitch it into our own stuff.

There are alternative techniques available of course – we have other troutes in use for particular systems, generally also based on holding a table of ‘authorised and valid’ document objects, then running the approriate function against the entry – browser access could be useful, but the consistent speed of 5250 emulation and integration into core legacy systems decided that the ‘main’ way in is still good old DB2 and character screens.