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Using Multi-key Relationships

Within FileMaker development, there are a variety of must-know features and methods for doing certain things. You’ll be hard pressed to find these critical bits of info within the provided help. However, these are nuances which come with the environment and really only make sense once you start to integrate them into your user interfaces. One of these “hidden” features is known as Multi-key relationships. Using multi-key relationships, you can present data within the user interface which is de

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Using Multi-key Relationships

Within FileMaker development, there are a variety of must-know features and methods for doing certain things. You’ll be hard pressed to find these critical bits of info within the provided help. However, these are nuances which come with the environment and really only make sense once you start to integrate them into your user interfaces. One of these “hidden” features is known as Multi-key relationships. Using multi-key relationships, you can present data within the user interface which is de

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker "One Liners"

As you see and write more and more code within any development environment, you start to view code which simply looks clean and efficient as opposed to long and inefficient. In this video, we’re taking a look at some so called FileMaker “One Liners”. These are simple snippets of code which typically only take one line in order to do something pretty cool. While the code doesn’t always take exactly one line, because FileMaker uses more than just actual code, it’s the super simple implementation

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker "One Liners"

As you see and write more and more code within any development environment, you start to view code which simply looks clean and efficient as opposed to long and inefficient. In this video, we’re taking a look at some so called FileMaker “One Liners”. These are simple snippets of code which typically only take one line in order to do something pretty cool. While the code doesn’t always take exactly one line, because FileMaker uses more than just actual code, it’s the super simple implementation

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 16 - Implementing Tags/Tagging

Our FileMaker Custom Function database is moving along quickly as we add more user-based features. The feature being added in this part of the series is a Tags/Tagging feature where it takes the concept of a “favorite” much further. Rather than using a single field for tagging a record as a favorite, we’ll be using a join table and allowing the user to add as many different tags as desired. The implementation applies to “all users” of the database system, but could easily be modified to become

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 16 - Implementing Tags/Tagging

Our FileMaker Custom Function database is moving along quickly as we add more user-based features. The feature being added in this part of the series is a Tags/Tagging feature where it takes the concept of a “favorite” much further. Rather than using a single field for tagging a record as a favorite, we’ll be using a join table and allowing the user to add as many different tags as desired. The implementation applies to “all users” of the database system, but could easily be modified to become

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker 16 - Encrypting/Decrypting data

FileMaker 16 added a variety of new features designed to support its new ability to interact with web services using JSON. One of those supporting features was the addition of more cryptographic functionality. Previously, the only native feature available was an MD5 hash. At the time of it being added, it was already out of fashion as a security based feature, but it could be used to compare two things against each other. By adding new encryption and decryption capabilities, we are now able to

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker 16 - Encrypting/Decrypting data

FileMaker 16 added a variety of new features designed to support its new ability to interact with web services using JSON. One of those supporting features was the addition of more cryptographic functionality. Previously, the only native feature available was an MD5 hash. At the time of it being added, it was already out of fashion as a security based feature, but it could be used to compare two things against each other. By adding new encryption and decryption capabilities, we are now able to

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 15 - Copy/pasting groups of functions

Moving forward with the Custom Function database project, we now have the opportunity to copy and paste our groups of custom functions. The trick to accomplishing this requires a modification to the singular copy/paste being used for a single custom function. The database now needs to provide a list of functions, in the xml snippet format, to be copied to the clipboard. This is easily accomplished through the relationships and by modifying the original script. If you’ve never had the problem w

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 15 - Copy/pasting groups of functions

Moving forward with the Custom Function database project, we now have the opportunity to copy and paste our groups of custom functions. The trick to accomplishing this requires a modification to the singular copy/paste being used for a single custom function. The database now needs to provide a list of functions, in the xml snippet format, to be copied to the clipboard. This is easily accomplished through the relationships and by modifying the original script. If you’ve never had the problem w

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Managing Favorite Hosts & Files

Over the years, FileMaker has added, enhanced and modified various areas of the development platform. One of the areas which has seen a big transition is the way favorites are managed. If you're a long-time developer of FileMaker solutions, then one of the more recent changes in FileMaker 16 may be a bit disconcerting. The change was to how favorites are managed. In fact, they simply took out the menu option and sorta left you hanging. The "Manage favorites..." menu is no longer present within

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Managing Favorite Hosts & Files

Over the years, FileMaker has added, enhanced and modified various areas of the development platform. One of the areas which has seen a big transition is the way favorites are managed. If you're a long-time developer of FileMaker solutions, then one of the more recent changes in FileMaker 16 may be a bit disconcerting. The change was to how favorites are managed. In fact, they simply took out the menu option and sorta left you hanging. The "Manage favorites..." menu is no longer present within

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Cool looking process indicators

Most everyone likes to know what's going on when something is happening. Being kept in the dark is something which causes possible anxiety and certainly a fair amount of impatience. So, it's always nice to provider your user with a little bit of status when there's some type of progress happening. Fortunately, this is a very easy thing to solve when a lot of the work is already done for you. All you need to do is wire things up within a FileMaker web viewer. Using the information within this v

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Cool looking process indicators

Most everyone likes to know what's going on when something is happening. Being kept in the dark is something which causes possible anxiety and certainly a fair amount of impatience. So, it's always nice to provider your user with a little bit of status when there's some type of progress happening. Fortunately, this is a very easy thing to solve when a lot of the work is already done for you. All you need to do is wire things up within a FileMaker web viewer. Using the information within this v

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 14 - Supporting groups/collections

FileMaker Pro, beyond your normal join table, offers a unique method of storing collections, or groups, of items. You can do this with what is called a multi-key field. This isn’t to be confused with a compound-key, which is a primary key composed of multiple different values. Using a multi-key field we can store a collection of custom functions within our Custom Function database. This makes it possible to start the process of collecting groups of functions together and then adding a feature s

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 14 - Supporting groups/collections

FileMaker Pro, beyond your normal join table, offers a unique method of storing collections, or groups, of items. You can do this with what is called a multi-key field. This isn’t to be confused with a compound-key, which is a primary key composed of multiple different values. Using a multi-key field we can store a collection of custom functions within our Custom Function database. This makes it possible to start the process of collecting groups of functions together and then adding a feature s

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Quick Tip: Rounded Button Bar Segments

There are all kinds of nice graphic tips and tricks within FileMaker and one of my most favorite is using the transparent line setting in order to create the rounded effect on multiple segment Button Bars. Click the title or link to this article to view the video. View the full article

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Quick Tip: Rounded Button Bar Segments

There are all kinds of nice graphic tips and tricks within FileMaker and one of my most favorite is using the transparent line setting in order to create the rounded effect on multiple segment Button Bars. Click the title or link to this article to view the video. View the full article

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 13 - Parsing JSON

As with visiting any new country where they speak a different language, if you can’t speak it, then it’s pretty hard to communicate. The same thing applies to intercommunication between technical systems. If you don’t take the time to learn the format being used, then you obviously won’t get very far. In this video, we take a look at processing JSON from GitHub’s API. It’s one of the last places we’re looking for FileMaker Custom functions. GitHub is a web site which hosts hundreds of thousands

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database 13 - Parsing JSON

As with visiting any new country where they speak a different language, if you can’t speak it, then it’s pretty hard to communicate. The same thing applies to intercommunication between technical systems. If you don’t take the time to learn the format being used, then you obviously won’t get very far. In this video, we take a look at processing JSON from GitHub’s API. It’s one of the last places we’re looking for FileMaker Custom functions. GitHub is a web site which hosts hundreds of thousands

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Top 5 Time Saving Tips

Who likes spending time doing things in FileMaker Pro when you can do things faster? How about no one. That’s why this video will help you save some time when you discover the various ways you can interact with layout objects and your data. So, here’s 5 different tips which will save you some time while working in FileMaker Pro. Click the title or link to this article to view the video. View the full article

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Top 5 Time Saving Tips

Who likes spending time doing things in FileMaker Pro when you can do things faster? How about no one. That’s why this video will help you save some time when you discover the various ways you can interact with layout objects and your data. So, here’s 5 different tips which will save you some time while working in FileMaker Pro. Click the title or link to this article to view the video. View the full article

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database - Part 12 - User feedback

Some buttons in your user interface are likely more than obvious in terms of what they do. But what about those times when they're not and it's just nice to let the user know what just happened? Using a combination of Slider panels and mutli-segment Button Bars you can provide any type of feedback you might like to show. This video presents a method for showing the user some feedback about the results of clicking a button or any other user interface action taken. Note to subscribers: If you're

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database - Part 12 - User feedback

Some buttons in your user interface are likely more than obvious in terms of what they do. But what about those times when they're not and it's just nice to let the user know what just happened? Using a combination of Slider panels and mutli-segment Button Bars you can provide any type of feedback you might like to show. This video presents a method for showing the user some feedback about the results of clicking a button or any other user interface action taken. Note to subscribers: If you're

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

Custom Function Database - Part 11 - RegEx Parsing

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

FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Magazine

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