Excel formatting and charts from FileMaker using XlsxWriter

If you’ve developed solutions with FileMaker for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly created files using FileMaker’s native Excel exports. Although quite useful, this feature gives almost no control over the formatting, and definitely no way to set formulas, charts, or even text formatting.

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Avoid nil-checks. Code confidently. Be happy.

This post is about pretty code (with examples in Ruby), plus how to get nil out of the way and be more confident.

Does this code look familiar?

user && user.ask_for_email

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Version 0.82 of bBox Now Available

We are pleased to release another update to bBox, v0.82 of our free FileMaker utility plug-in.

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JavaScript-driven PDF Reports in FileMaker using AngularJS

Introduction – Extending FileMaker with JavaScript

Using a combination of AngularJS, HTML5, CSS, WKHTMLTOPDF, PDFtk, bBox and FileMaker scripting, we can create PDF reports from a FileMaker solution, taking advantage of the design and development flexibility afforded by using JavaScript and web tools to accomplish the task.

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Installing xhtml2pdf on OS X

Xhtml2pdf is a cross-platform Python module that allows easy conversion of HTML or XML to PDF files. Its dependencies, ReportLab & Pisa, also have a host of very useful functions, including programmatically creating or modifying PDF content & creating barcodes.

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Computer Science Education Week…Hour of Code!

This week the Beezwax crew found a fun way to give back to Oakland by participating in the Computer Science Education Week (CSEdW), Hour of Code. The Hour of Code exposes children to the basics of computer science, including sequential instructions, loops and conditional statements.

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Run PHP code with FileMaker & bBox

For quite a while, the documentation and product information for bBox has mentioned it as a way to run PHP scripts, but I only just recently realized that we never had any examples of how to do this.

Here are two methods to try.

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bBox 0.80 Now Available

Its been almost a year since we’ve mentioned bBox on this venue, but we are now pleased to announce that version 0.80 is publicly available.

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FileMaker Log Files: Episode VII – PSoS Awakens

Now more than ever we’re relying on Perform Script on Server (PSoS) to maximize FileMaker performance, so naturally a need arose for a way to proactively monitor how many concurrent scripts are being triggered. This type of logging helps us see if we’re reaching our maximum limit, or have a rogue script eating up processing power.

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fmsadmin: where did you go?

I have a few scripts, including some Facter reporting “facts”, that make heavy use of FileMaker Server’s fmsadmin command. After a 14.0v4 on install on Yosemite I was puzzled to discover that one of the scripts wasn’t working.

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Introducing ‘Publish To Apple News’ – Open Source WordPress Plugin

We’re thrilled to announce the availability of the Publish To Apple News plugin for WordPress. It’s an open source plugin for the WordPress web platform that enables publishers to push their blog and website content to News, Apple’s all-new app available with iOS 9.
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What is Dependency Injection

If you are a developer, chances are very good that you know what Object-Oriented (OO) code is. You might have also heard about OO Design Patterns, things like single responsibilities, decoupled code, and my subject here: Dependency Injection (DI).

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FMAjax and FileMaker Web Viewers

With everything that we’ve learned with our last post, Communicating with a Web Viewer in FileMaker, it makes sense to wrap up the functionality into a FileMaker module and JavaScript library.

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InspectorPro 5.5 Feature List!

InspectorPro 5.5 is here! With it come some great enhancements and complete support for FileMaker 14:

• Now supports new features, themes, and styles found in FileMaker 14
• New visualization gives you a quick view of referenced and unreferenced items and problems
• New streamlined database view to help you get a bird’s-eye view of your database
• Automatic detection of malformed XML or invalid characters

Communicating with a Web Viewer in FileMaker

Beezwax has always been active in the FileMaker community regarding advanced use of Web Viewers. Check out these earlier posts if you’d like to learn more:

  1. Native Web 2.0 Controls in FileMaker 12 Layouts
  2. Go, JavaScript Go!
  3. Enable WebKit debugger in FileMaker Web Viewer

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Enable WebKit debugger in FileMaker Web Viewer

If you are having difficulty getting your HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to render in a FileMaker Web Viewer, you may have a struggle ahead of you trying to find the problem, and no good way to debug it. In comparison, most web browsers have debug facilities that can help developers find problems in their code.

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Useful Vim Mappings

A few mappings to help boost your Vim workflow.

Rotate through different line numbering settings

Switch between absolute line numbers (normal), relative numbers (based on distance from your cursor) and no numbers at all using CTRL-n:

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A Web Developer’s OS

What must an Operating System do to satisfy web developers’ needs? This is a tricky question, as each person is a whole different world, so it’s impossible to have a single answer to satisfy every person.

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Keep FileMaker Server Web Logs at Fixed Paths

If you need to scrounge through the web server’s logs in the file system, the way FileMaker Server stores these on Mac OS can be a bit annoying. You end up with a bunch of files named like this:

jQuerySF 2015 – Much more than jQuery…


Attending jQuerySF 2015:

This week I had the pleasure of attending jQuerySF 2015, held in San Francisco, CA.

Despite the name of the conference, the range of web-technology topics included far more than just jQuery.

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