Custom Functions How To & Help

Auditing Fields Modified By Script

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:40:37 GMT

Hi All

I have found a fantastic video tutorial on logging changes made to records freely available at the following url:

Filemaker Magazine Super Audit Logging Tutorial

Moderators: Please edit this post if this infringes copyright. I am assuming not on the basis Matt Petrowski mentions copyright issues in the video.

All credit goes to Matt Petrowski and the original function creator Ray Cologon,NightWing Enterprises, Melbourne, Australia
www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker

Function usage: AuditLog (Logfield; Fields; Format; Seperator)

The code to the function is as follows:

Code:



 
Let(
[
// Setup

_Trigger = Fields;
_LogLength = Length(LogField);
_Script = Get(ScriptName);
_Repetition = Get(ActiveRepetitionNumber);
_RepeatFlag = If(_Repetition > 1; "[" & _Repetition & "]");
_FieldName = Get(ActiveFieldName) & _RepeatFlag;

// Locate Any Previous Field Value in Log

_FieldInLog = Position(LogField; Separator & _FieldName & Separator; 1; 1);
_Divider = Separator & "-»" & Separator;
_Start = Position(LogField; _Divider; _FieldInLog; 1) + Length(_Divider);
_End = Position(LogField & ¶; ¶; _FieldInLog; 1);
_PreviousValue = If(_FieldInLog; Middle(LogField; _Start; _End - _Start); "[---]");

// New Field Value (fixes returns)

_FieldValue = GetField(_FieldName);
_FixedValue = Substitute(_FieldValue; ¶; "‡");
_NewValue = If(Length(_FieldValue); _FixedValue; "[null]");

// Format Values

_%Date = GetAsDate(Get(CurrentHostTimeStamp));
_%Time = GetAsTime(Get(CurrentHostTimeStamp));
_%Account = Get(AccountName);
_%Field = _FieldName;
_%Change = _PreviousValue & Separator & "-»" & Separator & _NewValue;
_%Table = Get (LayoutTableName);
_%Layout = Get(LayoutName);
_%Key = GetAsNumber (Get(CurrentHostTimeStamp)) & _PreviousValue & _NewValue;

_LogFormat = Substitute( Format;
                              ["%Date"; _%Date & Separator];
                              ["%Time"; _%Time & Separator];
                              ["%Account"; _%Account & Separator];
                              ["%Field"; _%Field & Separator];
                              ["%Change"; _%Change & Separator];
                              ["%Table"; _%Table & Separator];
                              ["%Layout"; _%Layout & Separator];
                              ["%Key"; _%Key & Separator]
                              );
_LogString = Left( _LogFormat; Length( _LogFormat ) - Length( Separator ) )

];

If( Length(_FieldName) and Length(_Script) = 0;
  _LogString & Left(¶; _LogLength) & LogField;
  LogField
  )

)

 // Original Function by Ray Cologon
// NightWing Enterprises, Melbourne, Australia
// www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker

// Revised by Matt Petrowsky

I have been playing around with this for hours now trying to get the function to audit changes made by a script. Obviously my coding skills aren't quite up to it.

Can anyone give me any pointers?

Thanks in advance

Lee

Recording marketing activity

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:36:12 GMT

Hi

I have taken the template for contact management and converted the fields to suit my needs.

Each record will be for a client and I will be recording their address, my main contact, secondary contact and various information about their company. So far so good and all up and running!

The bit I am stuck with is to do with recording marketing activity.

I want to be able to do the following

Do a search/sort and select say 50 companies.

Then I will print an address label for these companies to use for a mailshot.

I then want to be able to record on all of their files that I have sent them the mailshot eg flyerJuly2010.

I would need to be able to keep a history of all mailshots sent.

I would also like to be able to use this recorded information to search for companies that have received mailshots.

I pressume that this is possible but just cant work out the best way or how to do it!

All help appreciated.

Thanks

Oliver.

Send and Recive Gmail from my FM Solution

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:14:58 GMT

Hi!
I got a quick question.

Is there any way to make my Filemaker solution to send and recieve emails strait from within my solution?
I need the outgoing and incoming emails to be saved like a "chat" or "log" so that i can follow the Email conversations for each and every client in my database.

There will be multiple users and they will all be using Gmail.

Really really grateful for any help I can get.

Thanks

Freddy

UniqueListFast and UniqueListCountFast

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:13:40 GMT

This is a highly optimized version of the "Unique List" function.

I was having terrible performance problems with the common "unique list" algorithm (as seen http://www.briandunning.com/cf/596 ) and similar.

The issue is that these functions use both the RightValues and CountValues functions -- both of which require filemaker to (A) separate the list into separate values, and (B) process the entire list.

I realized that when looking for unique values, we only need to find the First non-unique value -- at that point we can short-circuit the calculation.

And, since values are separated by paragraph characters, we can actually just use a character-based method which turns out to be much faster since it doesn't require turning a string into a list of separate values.

Without further ado, I present "UniqueListFast":

Code:



 UniqueListFast(theList)

// recursive function that takes a list and returns only the unique items

// This is highly optimized for speed -- instead of using CountValues and FilterValues , we use character-based comparisons using 
// Position() which short-circuit the match

Let( 
[   this =  GetValue ( theList ; 1 )  // the value we are testing for uniqueness
 ;
  nThis  = Length(this) ;  // character length of this value 
  nList = Length(theList) // character length of list

]
;
Case(
  theList = ""  ; "" ;  // end of list
  theList = "¶" ; ""  ;// end of list

  // if we find a second instance of this item? then skip this item, or include this item if unique
  // note hack here: since we are searching for "¶this" we automatically will skip the 1st instance!
  If ( Position( theList; ¶ & this ; 1 ; 1) > 0 ;  "" ; this & "¶"    )
  // and process rest of list recursively
  &  UniqueListFast( Right(theList; nList- nThis - 1) )
)  
)

And the sister function which simply returns a count of the unique values

Code:



 
UniqueListCountFast(startCount; theList)

// recursive function that takes a list and returns the count of unique items

// This is a highly optimized version which uses Position() which can short-circuit the match
// other versions use FilterValues and RightValues which are very slow

Let( 
[   this =  GetValue ( theList ; 1 )  // the value we are testing for uniqueness
 ;
  nThis  = Length(this) ;  // character length of this value 
  nList = Length(theList)  // character length of list

]
;
Case(
  theList = ""  ; currentCount  ;  // end of list
  theList = "¶" ; currentCount   ;// end of list

  // note hack here: since we are searching for "¶this" we automatically will skip the 1st instance!
  // unique?
  Position( theList; ¶ & this ; 1 ; 1) > 0 ;  
    // not unique
    UniqueListCountFast( currentCount ; Right(theList; nList- nThis - 1) )  ; // currentCount + restOfList

  // unique  
  UniqueListCountFast( currentCount + 1 ; Right(theList; nList- nThis - 1) )  // currentCount + 1 + restOfList

)  

)

Recursive Custom function

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:27:30 GMT

Hi There

Need some help with this
Looking for a custom function. that does this
field 1 =
jim
sally
susan
dave
-------------------------------------
the output should be

jim
jim sally
jim sally susan
jim sally susan dave
sally
sally susan
sally susan dave
susan
susan dave
dave

Any help would be appreciated. I did this in a script but it was way to long and I felt that a recursive function would be alot shorter

Thanks Again
Stu

auto serial number as a slave

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:17:59 GMT

Hi! I have a problem. as a Customer and equipment, I have two layout. I will give auto serial number for customer id. I want to give also auto serial number for equipment as a related by Customer.

For example My Customer name "John" and id number 1.
If John takes five equipment, five equipment id number get 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. after that Customer name "George" and id number 2, George takes four equipment. four equipment id number get 6, 7, 8 and 9. It will go on like this. How can I make me by using file maker? Thanks all friends.

CF to remove chars from text

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:24:00 GMT

Despite how hard I try I can't incorporate the logic of recursive functions into a working syntax, so any help is appreciated:

The task is to selectively remove from a return delimited list either a certain number of characters from the start of each line or up to a certain character (e.g. inderscore _).
I suppose that the logic should be something like the following pseudo-code (as if it was a script):

1. Count the number of lines
2. Define the number of characters from start
3. Go to first line
4. Loop
5. Do Replace Function (String; From;To;"")
6. Go to next line
7. Exit Loop if Line > Number of Lines

Another thing would also be to be able to define the search character up to which chars will be deleted.
Can anyone help?

..

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:32:44 GMT

That did the trick. The substitute function. Great.... let me be your humble servant

And the quotes around the expression of course(they are a leftover during my tests)

But I am still kinda confused. I do not understand how the substitute function can help here. The return type is still text. So you substitute text with text ?!?!?

Custom Barcode Labels

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:50:37 GMT

Now I know im not the only one who has had problems trying to print their own custom barcode labels . I started trying to print my own about 6 months ago but kept encountering lots of problems. I downloaded good software and bought a label printer (Zebra), but still I came across problems. Does anyone have any suggestions on software to use? Im close to giving up and really need some help!

Thanks

Passing function as parameter

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 12:15:34 GMT

Well hello

I am try to pass a function A as a parameter to function B. This function A will return true OR false. I want a second function B to count the number of records, based on the first function A. The condition is the function A I am trying to pass.

Problem:
The passed function A is not evaluating correctly. The condition is always being evaluated as True.

Example:
I am calling this code out of a table field(Type: formular).

Code:

Let([
expression="GetNthRecord (rekla_rt_Ersatz::Type ; start_recordno)=\"Loaner\""

];
recordcount_on_expression ( rekla_rt_Ersatz::ID ; expression; 1 )
)

This is the function:

recordcount_on_expression ( primary_key_field ; expression; start_recordno )

Code:



 

If(IsValid ( GetNthRecord ( primary_key_field; start_recordno) );

case (
Evaluate("expression");

1 + recordcount_on_expression ( primary_key_field ; expression; start_recordno + 1 );
 
recordcount_on_expression ( primary_key_field ; expression; start_recordno + 1 )

)

;0)

I hope somebody has a clue. Thanks a lot

Bye
Robert