Category: All

OOP Fundamentals: The Decorator Pattern

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Software Design, Swift, Web Development

The decorator pattern is one of my favorite patterns. It is simple, extensible and powerful. It feels like it follows the essence of object oriented programming beautifully. Sadly though, it is also easy to be misused or misunderstood. So, in this post I will show you the essence of the decorator pattern, illustrated with a few examples.

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OOP Fundamentals: The Dependency Inversion Principle

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Software Design, Swift, Web Development

The dependency inversion principle is one of the cornerstones of object-oriented programming. Without it, there is no object-oriented design. It’s that important.

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Integrating your dev workflow with WSL

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, productivity, Tools, Vim, Web Development

Windows Subsystem for Linux, or WSL for short, is a quite impressive piece of technology, and one of the best moves Microsoft could have made to attract developers. Particularly web developers.

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Math in a FileMaker field, for Inputter’s sake

by Christos Savva
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 18, FileMaker 19, UX

Editor’s Note: An often-ignored reality of data management is that entering data, correctly and cleanly, into all of these database apps we build can be a royal pain in the…
Assumptions can be dangerous, like assuming that your office manager-doubling-as-bookkeeper wants to manually calculate tax on every Invoice row. Or even has the time to.

Not many job titles (anymore) are simply “Data Entry Manager,” and yet entering data is a task that continually must be managed, by one or by many, in the role of “Inputter”. Just entering data can be tedious enough — so, let’s not make it harder. In fact, let’s strive to make it easier. With that in mind, Beezwax Senior Developer Christos Savva provides an example of performing math in a FileMaker field, using a custom function. This is designed to improve data entry user experience, for the sake of Inputters everywhere.

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Setting FileMaker’s startup file from CLI

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 18, FileMaker 19, Techniques

We had a client that was upgrading their system to FileMaker 18. They had already pushed new FileMaker Pro clients out to their user’s desktops. But now that the upgraded system was ready, how could they give users a quick and easy way to launch right into the new database system?

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How to enable WebKit and JavaScript debugging in FileMaker Web Viewers

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 17, FileMaker 18, FileMaker 19, FileMaker Server, Integration, JavaScript, Techniques, Testing, Web Development

FileMaker supports bidirectional communication between a web viewer and data or scripts. So, you may find yourself doing more development using plenty of web code and JavaScript integrations.

If you’re having difficulty getting your HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to render in a FileMaker web viewer, there’s a great way to help inspect and fix it. You just need to know the hidden option to enable WebKit debugging in FileMaker web viewers.

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Common Code Smells in OOP

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Software Design, Swift, Web Development

Over years of reviewing Ruby code, the same things tend to come up over and over. In this post, I’d like to address some of the most common code smells I find when reviewing OOP code (and Ruby code in particular).

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Claris Connect in action

by Vincenzo Menanno
Posted in All, Claris Connect, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, Integration, Tools & Add-ons

Doing the simple is hard. Someone recently reminded me of this when discussing business workflow. Tasks like scheduling, calendaring, communicating and sending notifications are individually manageable, in a world where tools for these tasks exist online. Calendars, email, databases, Slack, and a collection of other apps and services make this possible.

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Installing the Zabbix 4.2 Monitoring Agent

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, FileMaker, FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Server, Monitoring, System Administration

On our FileMaker Cloud for AWS servers, which are currently CentOS 7.6 based, we are typically installing the Zabbix monitoring agent. With one exception, installing the Zabbix agent is a relatively quick and easy procedure.

Although not required, installing the agent allows gathering more data on your servers than a Zabbix server alone.

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Restoring Backup Files on FileMaker Cloud for AWS

by Darren Burgess
Posted in All, FileMaker, FileMaker 17, FileMaker 18, FileMaker Cloud, Server Administration, System Administration

Recently, we had a client who required restoration of FileMaker backup files for their FileMaker Cloud for AWS 1.17–hosted solution. This seemed a simple enough request—we would download their backup files using the FileMaker Cloud for AWS Admin Console and then re-upload them to the server. However, things did not go smoothly as there was seven gigabytes of data to download and the process was too slow for their fast-paced production environment…like half-a-day too slow.
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Using Siri with FileMaker, via iOS Shortcuts

by Fabio Bosisio
Posted in All, FileMaker, FileMaker 17, FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Data API, FileMaker Server, Integration, Mobile Development, Techniques

“Hey Siri…Ask FileMaker…”

This story started when we explored iOS Shortcuts to the FileMaker Data API. As we continue to automate tasks by mixing together iOS apps, content on mobile devices and web APIs plus FileMaker, let’s add to our workflow using one of the most powerful functions available to iPhone and iPad users: Siri.

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A Ruby-ish Xmas

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Software Design, Web Development

Ruby-ish, rubbish… Get it? Anyways, not like Ruby-ish means bad! Quite the opposite!

It’s the day after Xmas and because Ruby is awesome and delivered 2.6.0, we’ll get to play with some of our new Xmas gifts: Kernel#then, Proc#>> and Proc#<<.

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ePubber – generating ePub files with Ruby

by Federico Ramirez
Posted in All, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Tools, Web Development

ePub is a digital book format which is pretty common nowadays. It’s supported natively by Windows and Android and it’s one of the official formats for digital books in the Apple Books store.

In this post I’ll talk about generating ePub files with Ruby and how to painlessly integrate this feature to your application. I’ll be using a Ruby gem I created called ePubber, which I created to help manage ePub content.

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Introducing Admin FM – the FileMaker Admin API for Zapier

by Brendan Pierce
Posted in All, FileMaker, FileMaker 17, FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Server, Integration, Server Administration, Tools & Add-ons

Introducing Admin FM – the Zapier integration for accessing the FileMaker ® Admin API in an easy, customizable way. Built using Node.js, this version of Admin FM is currently a beta version, but it allows you to access most of the functionality that the FileMaker Admin API allows.

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bBox for FileMaker v0.90 Now Available

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, bBox, FileMaker, FileMaker Server, Integration, JavaScript, Python, Tools & Add-ons

We are pleased to release bBox version 0.90. bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries and macOS-based functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Included is a demo file that has over 200 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.

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FileMaker DevCon, with a capital “D”

by Jay Gonzales
Posted in All, Community, Events, FileMaker, Tableau FM

The Beezwax Team is in Dallas, Texas on August 6-9, 2018 for the FileMaker Developers Conference. DevCon is always a perfect time to wrangle the best FileMaker insights, training, and connections across the global FileMaker developer community in attendance.
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Our First FileMaker 17 Certified Developers

by Jay Gonzales
Posted in All, Beezwax News, Community, FileMaker, FileMaker 17

We’re pleased to announce two Beez who have earned the title of FileMaker 17 Certified Developer.

  • Christopher Edwards, Senior Developer
  • Vincenzo Menanno, Senior Developer

Christopher and Vince are among the first developers to receive this designation since FileMaker 17 Certification was announced last week.

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Lost in Layout Space: Getting to Know FileMaker 17’s Layout Mode

by Andrew Witschonke
Posted in All, Design, FileMaker, FileMaker 17, Techniques

Way back when FileMaker 14 was released, as developers we were treated to the new-and-improved script workspace, adding all kinds of features from line breaks to auto-complete/type-ahead coding. To any of us who spend most of our day working in FileMaker, the response was sheer joy.

For all of its speed, flexibility, and ease-of-use, sometimes our favorite platform is missing some of those “standard”, quality-of-life features you would expect. For a long time, Layout mode has been lacking a few key features you would normally expect to see in a modern design application. With FileMaker 17, we get much closer to bridging that gap, receiving a whole bunch of handy, time-saving features along the way. Let’s dive in and take a look.
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Overcoming TLS Frustrations with Python and macOS Sierra

by Simon Brown
Posted in All, bBox, Python

The short version of this is that you probably want to upgrade to High Sierra (macOS 10.13) if you need to do much of anything with the built-in macOS version of Python and any network tasks.
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Working with FileMaker Cloud Backups Using SSH

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

Recently, I needed to revert a database file hosted on a FileMaker Cloud 16 server. Due to a problem I was having with the Download function however I had to take a different route from the usual method.

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