How to render or use raw hex file data from Make.com in Coda?

1

Hi everyone,

I’m using a Make.com scenario to extract a file from a third-party tool. This tool provides a download URL, but that URL cannot be used directly in Coda.

So, I used the “Download File” module in Make, which gives me the file content as raw hex data, like this:

ff d8 ff db  00 84 00 10  0b 0c 0e 0c  0a 10 0e 0d  0e 12 11 10  13 18 28 1a  18 16 16 18  31 23 25 1d  28 3a 33 3d  3c 39 33 38  37 40 48 5c  4e 40 44 57  45 37 38 50  6d 51 57 5f  62 67 68 67  3e 4d 71 79  70 64 78 5c  65 67 63 01  11 12 12 18  15 18 2f 1a  1a 2f 63 42  38 42 63 63  63 63 63 63  63 63 63 63  63 63 63 63  
End of data sample, buffer was originally 17927 bytes long.
SHA1: da665378240ae8c3532846d16d8b4d49d3a5579c

This raw data format works with other modules in Make (e.g. OneDrive, OpenAI), but I haven’t found a way for Coda to use or display it, especially as an image.

I’ve tried:

  • Looking for Make modules to convert the raw binary to a usable Image file or url,

  • Searching for Packs or formulas to convert raw hex into something displayable in Coda.

But I’m now hoping someone here has figured out a workaround — either via Make, a Coda Pack, or an external service — to get this raw image data into a format that Coda can render or display.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Best regards,
Alexande

2

Hi,
From memory, to test: the column must be of type file and putting the url is enough for the upload

3

Why is that? Is the URL temporary or behind some authorization?

For public and stable URLs, indeed it’s enough to put them into Coda as Image URL, and Coda will ingest it (make a local copy and serve it through imgix, the CDN they use for image delivery).

However, if all you’ve got is raw data, there’s basically two ways to go about it:

  1. Upload it somewhere with a public URL — e.g. into Google Drive or a Google Cloud Platform Storage bucket — and put that URL into Coda to ingest. Actually IIRC there’s some sort of file storage in Make itself where you can store binary data.

  2. Make a pack that will consume the file from the temporary download URL. This is better than hotlinking because it will actually force the file to be hosted on Coda, and won’t depend on the availability of that URL. Plus, if there’s some authentication at play (e.g. a Bearer token), you can keep it private in the pack and not expose it to doc users.

P.S. Also if the images are small enough (< 50 kb safely), you can Base64-encode them on the Make side, insert into any Coda cell, and have them displayed by their Data URI (i.e., Image("data:image/png;base64," + Base64EncodedData)

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