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brianmwise
Known Participant
August 20, 2010
Question

MapID help files...am I just doing it wrong?

  • August 20, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1030 views

Hi again, here with another (feels like) silly question.

My devs said, "We need the URL to call the files so we can begin the contextual help integration."

Since the help file built on the server is myserver.servername.com and we're using basic WebHelp as the output, I can't seem to figure out what the specific call needs to be made.

My mapID file and project map files exist with a full listing of both, but I can't for the life of me get it to work.

I followed this specific information from the Robohelp 8 manual:

Call a context-sensitive function for WebHelp or FlashHelp

  1. Call the following API for getting the context-sensitive information from the server.

    http://servername>/robohelp/rest/robowindow?wtype=ctx&context=<MAP ID>

    For example:

    To open the topic mapped as numbe 1, change the <MAP ID> with 1.

  2. Run the application and test the Help call.

Where:

myserver.myservername.com/UserGuide_YarpYarphelpYar?wtype=ctx&context=58

is what I see being the correct URL to call for the article mapped to the mapID 58. That SHOULD work once I've built the mapID file in Robohelp, and when I generate the project and load it to the support site, it should automatically

The one thing I am NOT seeing is a mapID file in the generated WebHelp output, however.

Am I just doing it wrong, or is there a specific structure I need to achieve to be able to use mapIDs for context-sensitive help in the project?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 21, 2010

You are talking about Map IDs but saying the developers want the URL.

Help can be called in more than one way and our developers use URLs for each CSH call rather than Map IDs. Maybe your developers plan or would be happy to call just using URLs rather than Map IDs

There's information on my site about calling webhelp. Take a look at that and then talk to the developers to see what they want.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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brianmwiseAuthor
Known Participant
August 23, 2010

That gives...some illumination.

Essentially what I want to get to the developer is the endpoint they need to call the mapID. I do not -want- them to call the URLs directly, because if they call the URLs directly, the application will wind up calling the wrong URLs in about three months (we change content a lot). mapIDs, as far as the process is concerned, makes more sense to me and to my boss because that way we can change the mapID to update the content as the application moves forward.

They've asked for the URL, which is not what we want to give them. What I want them to call is the mapID but I'm having a hard time finding exactly how the mapID system gets set up by a dev.

The thing is, if I can have them just call by article number (www.support.com/blahblah/AppID-<1>) that will make it a heck of a lot easier, but I'm not sure how to make sure that's set up properly.

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brianmwiseAuthor
Known Participant
August 23, 2010

PS: Peter, i have been mining your site like mad in the last few months precisely because I've had less experience setting this sort of thing up and more experience working it from the front-end (content-build). The site is somewhat confusing in places (due to either my lack of comprehension or the audience level) but still far and away better than the learning guides I bought again to try to rebuild my knowledge on the application. It's an incredibly valuable resource and I'm very glad to have it bookmarked.

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