Category: Techniques

Re-Thinking is the new Rebuilding

by Vincenzo Menanno
Posted in All, FileMaker, InspectorPro, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons

Sometimes you just need to start over and to take a fresh look at how you are doing things. Many of you know that I usually like to start things anew, but its also understandable that this is impractical at times.

With the release of FileMaker 12, I was inspired to dive deep into how InspectorPro 4 (IP4) was architected and change my way of thinking. It isn’t about REBUILDING per se, but rather this is about RE-THINKING your solutions as you move to FM 12.
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Button Up 2: Building State-Aware Buttons

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

Our previous post highlighted the new capabilities of the venerable FileMaker button. In FileMaker 12’s Design Surface, the once-humble button gains new-found expressive power, enabling it to respond fluidly to user hovers, taps, and clicks via what we termed interactive formatting. The catch: interactive buttons — whether in FileMaker 12, or on any other platform — are prone to semantic misinformation, in which interactive formatting unintentionally misleads and confuses users.

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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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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.

Continue reading “Code Signing a FileMaker Runtime” →

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.

Continue reading “Button. Up.” →

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?

Continue reading “Just a Slice, Please…” →

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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FileMaker 12 SQL: Crafting Structural Beauty

by Brian Schick
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

It’s hard to believe it’s been only a few months since SQL was introduced as part of FileMaker 12.

Continue reading “FileMaker 12 SQL: Crafting Structural Beauty” →

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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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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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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99 bottles of beer

by donovanchan
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

Here’s a fun little challenge for your Friday afternoon. You can do it at home, in a bar, or hopefully even at work. Best of all, it’s technical and creative. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to produce the lyrics to 99 Bottles of Beer in your favorite programming language. I chose to do the solution below in FileMaker. See 99-bottles-of-beer.net for the official challenge details. Continue reading “99 bottles of beer” →

Working with Repeating Fields

by Will Miro
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

Demo file:  RepeatingFieldFunctions.fp7

I began using FileMaker at the spry old age of FileMaker Pro 8, so I’ve never been through the trenches of using repeating fields to accomplish what can now be done with portals. However, repeating fields still have a variety of uses, and I’m happy to have them in my toolkit.

When I’m working with a repeating field, there are several questions I might ask of it, depending on the task at hand.

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Good Sir William’s Heirs

by Will Miro
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

Demo file:  Sir_Williams_Heirs_fp7

That old Bard, good Sir William, is nearing the end of his life. Having already provided well for his five children, he now seeks to divide his literary empire among his eleven grandchildren:

FamilyTree 1

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FileMaker Read-only Fields: Lighter, Smarter, Friendlier.

by Beezwax Team
Posted in All, FileMaker, Techniques

Here’s an interesting interface challenge we recently faced: A client needed to place text fields on a layout and fluidly choose which fields would be editable or read-only—the same field might exist in both editable and read-only state on the same layout.

Now, here’s the challenging bit: Each read-only field must have all the same capabilities of its editable cousins—users must be able to scroll, select, and copy text, and the field control must display all rich text formatting entered.

Continue reading “FileMaker Read-only Fields: Lighter, Smarter, Friendlier.” →

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