Accessing Product Images From Excel Pinboards

There are a few pinboards that allow you to access the images for a product.

What is a pinboard?
Fieldpine supply an Excel addin that allows you to access realtime retail data using simple Excel formulas. The name of the function is "pinboard", which comes from the concept that an Excel formula can retrieve a single value, without needing to know how that value was derived. For example

=pinboard("sales.count.period")

Returns total number of sales so far today

=pinboard("sales.count.period", '1-jan-2023', '1-feb-2023')

Returns total number of sales for January 2023

=pinboard("product.description", 15)

Returns the current product description for product #15

Product Image Pinboards

"product imageurl"

Returns a complete URL to access the first image for a product. The first parameter is the image PID or Physkey

=pinboard("product imageurl", 153)
=pinboard("product imageurl", 'KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK')

Note, there a space between the two words.

"product image count" or "product picture count"

Returns the number of images for a single product. The first parameter is either a PID or Physkey

=pinboard("product image count", 153)
=pinboard("product picture count", 'KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK')

Note, there a space between each word. You may use either "image" or "picture" as the second parameter, they are interchangeable.

Can Excel display the Image?

Yes and no. It is technically possible to have Excel display images, but it relies on using Excel macros and customistion inside the Excel spreadsheet itself. Depending on your use case, it can be simplier to create a web page if that is your need.

Other Ways to Access Images

Seperate to Excel, each image can be directly addressed with a standard URL naming scheme. Some examples

/Openapi/Product/153

Return the first known image for Pid=153

/Openapi/Product/153/2

Return the second known image for Pid=153

/Openapi/Product/KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK/2

Return the second known image for product (physkey=KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK)

/Openapi/Product/KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK/abchdhejgh2gkjdj4i5hthv

Return the image for product (physkey=KEPHJRJBNSNRKJJS9KSMEK) where the image MD5 checksum is abchdhejgh2gkjdj4i5hthv. This is a complex format but ensures that you can address exactly a specific version. It is most commmonly used by eCommerce websites to retrieve exact images

There is also a "Media Dump" report at

/report/can/MediaDump.htm

This report lists all active media records with technical details such as size and MD5. If you mouse over a row, the corresponding image is displayed.