Central file storage

[christian-eriksson]

At the moment, as far as I understand, files are stored as "one-offs", meaning each uploaded file is attached to one, and only one, record in LedgerSMB. By record I mean an Invoice, a GL entry, etc. This means that, when we upload or attach a file to such a record there is no way of reusing that same file instance and attach it to another entity.

This is an issue, for example, if one have document/-s that one often wants to attach to records, such as a standard agreement, terms of service document, or delivery information that you may want to attach to multiple purchases. With the current functionality the user has to find the document on their local machine and upload the same document each time they want to attach it; both taking up
unnecessary time and disk space.

The proposal is to separate the file storage and the attachment link. LedgerSMB would then have a central file storage and when a file should be attached to a record it needs a mechanism for finding uploaded files and creating the link between the file and the record.

[christian-eriksson]

This is a summary of a discussion we previously had in Matrix, I wanted to move it into github but wasn't sure is I should make an issue out of it, a project or a discussion. I figured that one can always make issues from discussions so I put it here :)