Vault GetFileAssociationLitesByIds() associationAlgorithm parameter

By Wayne Brill

GetFileAssociationLitesByIds is now the recommended API function for getting file relationships. This method is intended to replace all the other get-file-association methods in the document service. There is a plan to remove the older methods in a future release, leaving only GetFileAssociationLitesByIds (“lite” will probably be removed from the name).

The associationAlgorithm parameter essentially allows this one method to get the same relationships that could be obtained from any of the other methods. The API help topics describing the associationAlgorithm parameter will be improved too.

To better understand the concepts of the current release see the documentation for the older methods. (The documentation for GetFileAssociationLitesByIds will be improved so this extra lookup is unnecessary in a future release of the SDK).

Here is an guide for each FileAssocAlg enum. Only the first two are available in base Vault.

Actual – Gets the same relationships that GetFileAssociationsByIds would get.

LatestTip – Gets the same relationships that GetLatestFileAssociationsByMasterIds would get with releaseBiased=false. But file iteration IDs are passed – not file master IDs.

LatestConsumable – Gets the same relationships that GetLatestFileAssociationsByMasterIds would get with releaseBiased=true. But file iteration IDs are passed – not file master IDs.

RevisionConsumable – gets the same relationships that GetRevisionFileAssociationsByIds would get with releaseBiased=true.

RevisionTip – Gets the same relationships that GetRevisionFileAssociationsByIds would get with releaseBiased=false.

RevisionDate – Gets the same relationships that GetRevisionFileAssociationsByIds2 would get with dateBiased=true and releaseBiased=false. Essentially, the idea is to get the version of the revision that the end-user most likely had on disk when they checked-in the file. This is only used in rare cases in certain workflows. It should probably not be used for visualizations. Unlike the GetRevisionFileAssociationsByIds2 method, you can get parents when using this algorithm with the GetFileAssociationLitesByIds method.