I have been writing a repository module for our own in house repository. I discovered a nugget of information which would have saved me many hours of hair pulling when constructing the array of results. From the repository API documentation
// file picker will build a file tree according this
// list
'list' => array(
array( // file
'title' => (string) file name,
'shorttitle' => (string) optional, if you prefer to display a short title
'date' => (string) file last modification time, usually userdate(...),
'size' => (int) file size,
'thumbnail' => (string) url to thumbnail for the file,
'thumbnail_width' => (int) the width of the thumbnail image,
'source' => plugin-dependent unique path to the file (id, url, path, etc.),
'url'=> the accessible url of file
),
The difficulty was with the source item. There wasn't a Iot of information to go on so I couldn't work out how to separate the URL from the description when the item finally displayed. Simply adding a # between them sorted it like this:
$file_source="http://the_url_of_the_file";
$file_description="the_description_of_the_file";
$list[] = array(
"title"=>(string)"$file_title",
"thumbnail"=>(string)"$file_thumbnail",
"thumbnail_width"=>(int)150,
"thumbnail_height"=>(int)30,
"size"=>(string)"",
"date"=>(string)"$file_date",
"source"=>(string)"$file_source#$file_description"
);
Hope that helps someone.