# File Explorer Workarounds for Perspective?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** reporting, perspective\
**Created:** [January 15, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948 "2025-01-15T21:08:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sam\_Engsberg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/sam_engsberg/32/37540_2.png) [@Sam\_Engsberg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Sam_Engsberg)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 9:08pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948/1 "2025-01-15T21:08:53Z")

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Has anyone put together a simple workaround for browsing system files in perspective? My case is that I'd like my users to access reports that may or may not have been generated. i.e. generator 1 was not used that day, so no report was generated and placed in the folder.

I'd like to make a screen that gets these file paths, parses some info from the filepath, and displays it in a table so users can leverage the search feature for specific info.

I got the folder mounted via WebDev and can access my pdfs that are saved. It seems like you might be able to browse via a gateway system command like popen and rile it together based on that. I suppose you could also have some service on the server that you can hit an API on to return that information, too.

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**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948/2 "2025-01-15T21:13:32Z")

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Why do you need a work-around? Jython or java file listing functions should Just Work™ in Perspective, perhaps to populate a Perspective table with links.

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**Author:** ![Sam\_Engsberg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/sam_engsberg/32/37540_2.png) [@Sam\_Engsberg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Sam_Engsberg)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 9:30pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948/3 "2025-01-15T21:30:35Z")

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Believe it or not, I hadn't even considered that.  
I've gotten used to (i.e. lazy) thinking that Ignition's system.x.y commands are the extent of system-level functions without some wonky workaround. Off a brief glimpse, I'll plunk into the lower level jython functions (I'm assuming you mean librarys like 'os'), which should hopefully work fine. I don't really need links, just the filenames within that mounted folder.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/3X/8/d/8da9bdfa6481b1fc94138b66fb4752df77aa87f4.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sam\_Engsberg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/sam_engsberg/32/37540_2.png) [@Sam\_Engsberg](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Sam_Engsberg)\
**Post date:** [January 15, 2025, 9:34pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/file-explorer-workarounds-for-perspective/100948/4 "2025-01-15T21:34:52Z")

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Thanks Phil for sensible and simple solutions.

import os  
directory = r"C:\Users\LazyCoder\Reports"  
files = os.listdir(directory)  
print files