Category: All

Summarize how often databases are opened in FileMaker Server

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Server Administration, Techniques

We needed to quickly know how often various databases were being opened on a client’s server.

If you have Access logging enabled and are using a Mac OS based system, this shell snippet will give you a nice summary of how often each database has been opened:

awk -F" '{ if($3 == " opening database ") print $4;}' '/Library/FileMaker Server/Logs/Access.log' | sort | uniq -c

Unfortunately, it won’t show you a count for databases that were never opened within the scope of the current access log.

Simon.

Fail2Ban with FileMaker Server

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Server Administration, Techniques

I needed to configure a FileMaker Server (FMS) that would be an isolated system and accessible via the Internet.

Besides other precautions, like locking it down on the firewall as much as possible, changing the default SSH port, etc., I wanted to give the system some ability to defend itself against malicious access. FMS will prevent this to some extent, largely due to how the FMS Admin Console and the FileMaker client are designed.

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Curl HTTP Post from FileMaker

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, bBox, FileMaker, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons

I was trying to test out some HTTP post transactions with the curl command, and things weren’t working.

One glitch was due to how the curl command parses its options. All characters, including spaces can be significant, so “-X POST” is not the same as “-XPOST”. This difference might be hidden if calling from the shell, which trims extraneous spaces in parameters, but I was calling via the bBox plug-in’s curl function, and this calls the command directly from FileMaker.

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Debugging Apache with OSXS 10.8 Server 2.2

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, Server Administration

Besides being a bit of a mouthful, debugging Apache configuration issues has gotten slightly more complicated after Apple released the Server 2.2 update for Mac OS X Server.

Formerly, you could do a basic configuration check this way:

apachectl -t

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Code Signing a FileMaker Runtime

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

I wanted to code sign a runtime to avoid issues with users who had the higher security level set on their 10.8 based systems. Although lowering these permissions or holding down the control key when the app is launched will all help with this issue, code signing seems a reasonable and desirable, and removed the support issue.

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Button. Up.

by Brian Schick
Posted in All, Design, FileMaker, Techniques

Consider the humble button.

Since the very first moments of FileMaker cosmos, the button has been an essential element of our platform. Over the years, across major and minor product releases, the unassuming button has remained a trusted constant and a dependable workhorse.

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The First Step to Great Solutions

by donovanchan
Posted in All, Design

How do you begin designing a new database or application? If you start with an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD), you’re doing it wrong.

It’s natural for a technical person to begin categorizing things into entities – a company has contacts, which have addresses, etc. But this process immediately narrows your perspective to a small subset of the issues at hand, blinding you to many more important challenges and opportunities.

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Just a Slice, Please…

by Brian Schick
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

Here’s an interesting FileMaker challenge:

How can you dynamically slice off a set of values from a repeating field in a related table, the way you’d grab a column of values in a spreadsheet?

It’s easy enough to do this for a single repeating field in the current record, but how do you do this with a repeating field in a different table, operating not just on a single record, but an entire record set?

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XML Parsing with FileMaker and bBox

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, bBox, FileMaker, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons

In order to more easily work with XML data, I’ve added the libxml2 library to version 0.54 of the bBox plug-in.

Among other things, libxml2 provides support for XPath 1.0 queries, which can be used to easily extract or set values from XML data, so XPath was my first choice. Although XML has lost a bit of its shine as JSON has come into vogue, XML is still integral to many systems, including FileMaker. Also, the XPath routines can be used for similar syntaxes, so for instance, you might find it helpful for scraping data from a HTML page.

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Our First FileMaker 12 Certified Developers

by Jay Gonzales
Posted in All, Beezwax News, FileMaker, News

We’re pleased to announce three Beez who earned the title of FileMaker 12 Certified Developer.

  • Vincenzo Menanno, Director of FileMaker Development
  • Will Baker, Senior Developer
  • Brian Schick, Senior Developer

FileMaker 12 Certification is the official credential offered by FileMaker, Inc., certifying a developer as achieving an “essential level of knowledge, experience and skills in developing FileMaker 12 solutions.”

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[PR] Beezwax Announces InspectorPro 4 for FileMaker 12

by Jay Gonzales
Posted in All, Beezwax News, Data Analytics, FileMaker, InspectorPro, News, Tools & Add-ons

Beezwax Announces InspectorPro 4 for FileMaker 12

Leading Developer Tool Now Up To 10x Faster, Provides Deeper Analysis for FileMaker 12 Databases

MIAMI, Fla. – July 16, 2012 – Beezwax Datatools, Inc. today announced InspectorPro 4, a major new version of the leading developer tool for FileMaker 12 database analysis. Rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of FileMaker 12’s new architecture, InspectorPro 4 is up to 10 times faster than previous versions at processing FileMaker Database Design Reports. New features provide deeper analysis of database elements, a central dashboard, localized UI options, and powerful data visualizations – enabling FileMaker developers to discover more about their databases than ever before.

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Go, JavaScript Go!

by Brian Schick
Posted in All, FileMaker, JavaScript, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons

Introduction

You gotta love FileMaker Go. Go’s ability to effortlessly create data-driven mobile apps and extend existing desktop data applications to mobile users is transformative. But sooner or later, almost all of us run up against one of Go’s core limitations: its lack of native plugins.

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List cron entries for all users on Mac OS X

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, Server Administration

I needed to investigate why a script was being run, and I was pretty sure cron was launching it. The problem was, little useful information was being logged, and no one was sure how it had been set up or what user it was under. Although launchd is now the preferred mechanism on Mac OS for these kinds of things, you’ll still see many systems where cron is being used.

First, you want to become the root user. The following Terminal command is one way to accomplish this:

sudo -s

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Getting a FileMaker label’s text in a conditional formula

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

I wanted to do some conditional formatting, such that when a global field had a certain value the label would change its appearance. For example, if my sort column was “address”, then I wanted the column header containing the text “Address” to highlight.

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Using Cocoa’s PDFDocument class from FileMaker

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Python, Techniques

I’ve been looking for a way to interface with some Cocoa classes in the Mac OS X API from FileMaker for a while. My initial target was PDFDocument, part of the PDF Kit suite of classes. For more information on Cocoa’s PDF Kit see here: Introduction to PDF Kit Programming Guide

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Freebie: Grab CSS From FileMaker 12 Layout Objects

by donovanchan
Posted in All, Design, FileMaker, Techniques

There’s been plenty of discussion on FileMaker’s developer forums about the implications of using CSS to style layouts in FileMaker 12. In case you weren’t aware, FileMaker 12 introduced a new layout design surface whose styling is based on CSS. It’s a powerful new feature that hints at an exciting roadmap for the FileMaker product line. I’m not going to indulge in any details on this topic, however, because FileMaker has yet to officially expose the CSS styling to developers.

But say you were curious, for educational purposes, about what that styling looks like…

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Native Web 2.0 Controls in FileMaker 12 Layouts

by Brian Schick
Posted in All, Design, FileMaker, JavaScript, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons

One of the most exciting aspects of the newly-released FileMaker 12 product line upgrade is a major redesign to the product’s UI. A new Design Surface modernizes FileMaker Pro layouts and updates every built-in control, giving developers and designers powerful new tools for designing better interfaces.

But as great as Design Surface is, why just stay on the surface?

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FileMaker 12: Exciting New Possibilities

by donovanchan
Posted in All, FileMaker, News

FileMaker, Inc. introduced the next generation of their database platform today with the release of FileMaker 12. This is a major upgrade to every part of the FileMaker product line. There are new versions of FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro Advanced, FileMaker Server, FileMaker Server Advanced, and FileMaker Go – which is now free for iPhone and iPad.

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Recipe for testing JDBC connection to FileMaker Server

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

FileMaker Server Advanced allows external systems to connect to its hosted database files via ODBC and JDBC. The remote systems can then run SQL commands against the hosted databases. Often the hard part is getting all the infrastructure ready for this. That includes the correct extended permissions on the FileMaker database file, needed drivers, firewall settings, etc.

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