Browse for file when executing workflow on Knime server

[rabenschlag]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding regarding the excel reader.

I want to create a workflow to be run on a Knime server which just reads an Excel file. The file should be selected from the local machine when running the workflow using the configuration options in the execution options:

I tried achieving this using the local file browser configuration node but doing so I can select a file from the server only.

Am I doing something fundamentally wrong and is there a “Knime way of doing this” I do not know?

Thanks,
Johannes

[moritz.heine]

Hi,

you can only read files from server since the server doesn’t have a connection to your local machine as your local machine only acts as a client and not as a server. This means that you should upload the Excel file to the server itself. If the file changes regularly, I would make sense to put it somewhere, where it is accessible from your local machine and from the server, e.g. Google Drive.

Cheers,
Moritz

[rabenschlag]

Hi, thanks for your answer.

So to confirm this: When accessing data within a workflow on the server, the data itself has to be first uploaded outside of Knime to the server, like via SSH or FTP?

This is quite limiting as we are planning on running workflows reguarly with new data. Is there no way within Knime to somehow get data onto the server?

[moritz.heine]

Hi,

you don’t have to do that, you can simply drag the file from your explorer into the mount point or workflow group as you wish and KNIME Analytics Platform will upload it directly to the server (you can also drag’n’drop it to your LOCAL mount point).
You can also use the KNIME Server Connection node to create a workflow, that takes a local file and uploads it to KNIME Server.

Cheers,
Moritz

[rabenschlag]

Thanks, this helped us a lot.

Best,
Johannes