MadCap Software Forums

I've searched... and the only such instructions I've been able to find describe setting up a header file and providing the identifiers to the developer or vice versa... As the author, I've always been the one to create both the header file and the identifiers. And I never had to provide identifiers to the developers doing the actual implementation.

At my previous job, we were able to utilize a generic javascript that prevented us from having to constantly update the identifiers with the developer every time a new one was added.

Instead, the generic code used the content of the UI to pass that as a topic into Flare, then by convention, I set up flare to follow a specific topic pattern so that the javascript automatically hooked the topics to their corresponding screens within the software. The script was set up once, and I never had to go back to the developer to provide updated or new identifiers. Whatever he wrote in the script allowed anything new or changed to be automatically updated.

The developers I'm currently working with have never implemented CSH... so I need to provide them with something specific as to how to set up such a javascript. I know that you guys helped the dev from my old company set this up... so I"m hoping you have some instructions stashed someplace.

The idea of having to interrupt a developer to add new identifiers is cumbersome - and part of my job is to make THEIR job easier.

I have contacted Tech Support and they are unable to help me. I need to give our devs some idea of how they can repeat the process we used at my old company. Does anyone have ANY input on this?

I'm not 100% sure I understand what it is that you need help with.

If you've always created header file and identifiers, then I presume you previously used Flare's CSH. So the application that made the CSH calls must have used the same identifiers that you created, in which case the developers must've known what those identifiers were. So if you didn't provide the devs with a header file, you must have at least discussed with them the format and naming convention of the identifiers, so that the identifiers you created matched the ones they were using. So maybe the developers didn't provide you with a header file as such, but they presumably did tell you what identifiers to use, so that you could manually set them up in Flare.

Anyway, using Flare's CSH, the steps are:

(1) You create the alias and header files in Flare, and use the alias editor to map the identifiers to the topics. Make sure the target is set to use the alias file.

(2) Your developers create CSH calls from the application that use the same identifier names that you've set up in Flare.
This is described in the help here: https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare2022/Content/Flare/CSH/Process/CSH-Calls/CSH-Calls-HTML5-Developers.htm
For the apps I work with, we use the "URL method" for CSH calls. This is an example of using the URL method in a CSH link to Flare's own help, using the identifier "CSH_Calls_HTML5_Developers".
https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare2022/Default.htm#cshid=CSH_Calls_HTML5_Developers