One of FileMaker’s best advantages is its ability to quickly provide an interface to common data tasks. Sorting, filtering and analysis, via automated routines, make a database system better suited to routine tasks. Primarily, because you can control the user interface.
Typically, spreadsheet users don’t think in terms of disjointed data. Boiling data down into a relational model is something which takes a bit of patience and know-how. Data collection, however, is easily done within a spreadshe
FileMaker Pro is always advancing its collection of tools in order to accomplish more and more every day tasks. It provides default widgets such as tab panels and sliders and offers useful functions such as GetThumbnail() for resizing images.
GetThumbnail, however, will only get you so far. It will only resize an image to another size and provides no functionality regarding the manipulation of that image in any other way. This is where you need to turn to either a plug-in or JavaScript within a
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By Matt Petrowsky
FileMaker can be such a wonderful desktop tool for harvesting and managing a lot of data. It’s because the user interface is baked right there into the backend database. You can whip up a powerful data parsing solution in no time. Can it handle the data? Yep! Can you build the interface right there? Yep! This sense of “data power” can be compounded even more with a little bit of know-how.
When you’re not afraid to ste
REST (Representational state transfer) has quickly become the de facto standard for communication between services and apps. Before it, came SOAP and XMLRPC, but the two buzzwords you’ll hear over and over these days are REST and JSON.
When it comes to FileMaker, you’ve always been able to do super basic REST with the Insert from URL script step. Later down the road, FileMaker added in support for the POST method of service interaction with the httpspost:// url scheme.
While the basics are alw
Providing visual feedback about the sort state, and direction, of your list views is always a nice feature to have. Not only does it fulfill the expectations of what users are already used to within the OS, but it let’s users know they can actually sort on those columns.
In this video, I walk through the use of a Button Bar object in conjunction with some other common tricks in order to provide dynamic column sorting indicators.
This is one of those standard must-have features within your File
In the world of serialized data, there's only been a few key technologies and XML was certainly the forerunner. It's been around since the mid 90's and was originally added into FileMaker around version 5 - if memory serves. The implementation of XML/XSLT/XPATH wasn't fully complete with compatible functions and it only works as an import and export feature via the use of an XSLT style sheet.
Learning XSLT and XPATH weren't the easiest things to do and as computing moved forward, so did other t
While FileMaker’s script step Insert from URL does allow for basic communication with web services, it is, by no means, comprehensive enough to provide all the features necessary. What’s really needed is the full cURL library.
This open source tool has been available for over 15 years and is baked into a ton of software packages, including FileMaker itself. However, it’s really only exposed within plug-ins such as Base Elements and the MBS plug-in.
So, in order to fully understand what going o
BodyYou like being in control don’t you? Being able to control things exactly as you wish? Well, it’s one of the more addicting qualities of creating solutions quickly within FileMaker Pro.
When you’re working with dates, there are times when the native date picker just doesn’t cut it. You can’t make it larger or smaller, you can’t change its colors, and if you’re on iOS then you’re limited to the default iOS date picker. You’ve got no control.
When a user is choosing a date from a calendar, y
If you're the type of person who's into Math, then you probably know when you need to use Factorial() versus Exp() versus Div(). Inevitably, you're a better mathematician than I. My use of the Number functions extends to how useful they can be when you're creating your FileMaker user interface and solving workflow related problems.
When it comes to FileMaker's Number functions, there are number of tricks I've picked up over the years from those who are much smarter at the "math part" than I am
No Access? Watch the preview video here. AccordionMenus_Pre.mp4
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By Matt Petrowsky
When you’re designing in a small cramped space, and you’ve got a lot to put on the layout, you can always go for that native Popover button widget to store the extra info.
But when all that information needs to feel somehow connected to each other, just using a bunch of Popover buttons on the layout may not work well. In these cases, it’s best to go wit
No Access? Watch the preview video here. SlideoutMenus_Pre.mp4
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By Matt Petrowsky
Slideout menus have been around for quite some time in the mobile world. They often come alongside an icon of three short horizontal bars which are commonly called a hamburger menu. Called as such because it looks like two buns, with one above and one below the meat in between. This icon is also suspiciously similar to a "List view" icon in our familiar
With FileMaker’s PatternCount(), Left(), Right() and Middle() functions you can certainly extract a lot of data. The functions, however, are severely limited when it comes to matching variable patterns of data.
That’s where, in the world of programming, Regular Expressions, or RegEx for short, is SUPER handy! It’s used in pretty much EVERY computing language and I don’t personally know a professional developer who can develop without it. It’s been available since the 1950’s and it’s a worthwhil
In July of 2016, Matt was afforded the opportunity to present as a speaker at the annual FileMaker Developer's Conference. FileMaker Inc. decided to make the release of the session videos available for the general public. The session was well received with high marks given all around.
The session was a jam-packed roundup all the various things you can do with FileMaker layout objects in order to meet the objective of creating designs which work well within a small form factor. If taking advanta
When you're learning a new skill or programming language, you don't always know what you might need to know. Such was the case when I received an email asking me to go through the various groups of FileMaker functions. I thought to myself, "In most of my videos, I showcase the use of certain functions, but, I've never really gone through each function one by one."
So, in this video, I do exactly that. I relay my experience and exposure to each of the various FileMaker functions. Starting with t
When first learning about database development, and how to store large files such as media, archives and documents, I was introduced to the concept of a BLOB (Binary Large OBject).
At that time, I wasn't using FileMaker Pro as of yet but a database called FoxPro. The concept of FileMaker's Container fields, as places to store BLOBs, came so much easier than having to convert a file into another format which can be stored within a SQL data store - which is what you have to do with some other dat
Don't get me wrong, FileMaker has a lot of cool things it can do all on its own. In fact, they keep adding more and more useful tools which makes it easy to create great working software.
There are, however, those certain things that FileMaker just can't do on it's own. For example, you can't interact with images within container fields quite like you can certain web pages. Yet, right in front of us, we have the wonderfully powerful Web Viewer which exposes access to the power of JavaScript and
When you’re faced with creating a complex piece of FileMaker code, you often break the larger problem into smaller parts. It’s always easier to tackle smaller portions of a larger problem. Even when it doesn’t seem like the problem should be that big.
In this video, you’ll discover a lot of good information about how to break a larger problem down into its smaller parts. The problem being solved is extracting all the individual pieces of a US mailing address. There are so many various methods o
Working with dates within FileMaker isn’t as complex as working on launching a rocket to the moon. But, as with most all technical things, it’s always good to know what’s going on under the hood. Knowing how things work allows you to implement the desired solution in the most efficient manner.
When talking about relative dates we’re talking about “Today”, “Tomorrow” and “Last Year”, not 7/6/1996. You can always instruct FileMaker to lookup a date range based on the whole year of 1995, but isn’t
While recently teaching the layout/design portion of an in-person FileMaker training course, I found myself showing off one of the features which FileMaker has had since version 12. It’s an often overlooked feature which can be used quite creatively when you know how it works. It’s the Layout Background style of the layout theme.
When you understand the order in which FileMaker displays things, you’re free to create nice modern looking layout designs. Further, when you combine this with knowled
There’s an addictive quality to solving problems within FileMaker. Especially, when you wire things up to the user interface. Click the button, and what would have taken many times longer, is shortened into a few milliseconds of time.
It quite literally feels like you’re a magician - at least to this developer. So, when developing a solution the other day, and needing to copy the contents of one portal over to another, I quickly came up with a solution and put it into place.
Within about a hal
If you’re capturing photos with an iPhone or iPad and FileMaker Go, then everything should work just fine as long as you do everything within FileMaker Pro. You see, FileMaker takes care of presenting the user the picture in the proper way. But, this isn’t how the photo is stored.
As soon as you need to do any type of manipulation to the photo, then you’re headed for a shock when the picture turns out upside down or sideways.
This video discusses what you need to know in order to manipulate ph
Whether you're just starting out with FileMaker Pro or you've been hovering in the intermediate zone for a little while, it's always a good thing to have a solid understanding of how to structure data and use the Relationship Graph in order to accomplish the end objective.
When it comes to presenting a reducing set of available options, you have to understand how to get at what isn't being used in order to present it. The steps you need to take to show what isn't being used requires you to, fir
With FileMaker Pro, the application has become so much more complex than its humble beginnings. There are so many areas and aspects which you may not use until you see a good idea about how they can be used.
In this video, I showcase the Layout script trigger named OnGestureTap. It was introduced when FileMaker 13 was released along with FileMaker Go. The trigger only applies to clients which support it, which is primarily FileMaker Go on iOS and FileMaker Pro when running on a Windows compatib
Earlier in the year I released a video about using Google Forms in order to capture and then import data into FileMaker Pro. The code I was personally using was a bit more advanced than what I wanted to show at that time, so I simplified the process.
Having implemented, and used, many more Google Forms since that time, and knowing that I was exercising a great degree of control over the import process, I decided to reveal it all.
So, in this video I showcase the method I use to verify that an
FileMaker Pro has a wonderful PDF generator. In fact, one of the biggest benefits of using FileMaker for the purpose of output is that you can make any layout look exactly how you'd like and with a few script steps, you've got PDF output which will fit 95% of the situations you'll come across.
There are, however, certain situations where knowing how to generate a PDF using JavaScript, from within a Web Viewer, will give you the exact results you're looking for.
There are a number of advantages
