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FileMaker Hacks

A blog by Kevin Frank in Affiliate Blogs

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Entries in this blog

Fast Summaries Re-revisited

My recent “Virtual List on Steroids” presentation at DIG-FM, and the preparation of a revised version to give at dotFMP next week, has prompted me to reconsider certain assumptions re: optimizing performance both locally, and across a LAN and/or WAN. Specifically, there are two things we’re going to look at today. First, a way to […] View the full article

Thinking About JSON, part 1

I’ve been working on a couple large JSON projects over the last few months, and with the one year anniversary of FileMaker having built-in JSON capabilities just around the corner, this seems an opportune moment to share some reflections and opinions (some of which may contradict JSON-related opinions I have expressed previously). Demo file: json-sandbox.zip […] View the full article

Custom Field-Based Value Lists

Introduction Does this sound familiar? You’ve rolled out a solution that includes a single-record Settings table where authorized users can enter/update various system-wide settings, including one or more fields where the items will appear in popup menus… and then comes the inevitable question: Why don’t items in popup menus appear in the order I entered […] View the full article

Exposed by Tableau

Editor’s note: today we have a guest article written by John Weinshel, who has been quietly contributing to the FileMaker community for 20+ years. John’s thoughtful postings have helped developers at all levels of expertise, and I’m pleased to present his thoughts on Tableau here on FileMaker Hacks. Demo files: exposed-by-tableau.zip (6Mb, contains two .twbx […] View the full article

Virtual List on Steroids

Here are links to resources that may be referenced during my FM-DiSC presentation on Friday, January 12th. This page will be updated to include demo files in the near future. Virtual List Articles Long Documents in FileMaker 11 Conditional Subsummary Report in Browse Mode Virtual List Reporting, Part 1 Virtual List Reporting, Part 2 Virtual […] View the full article

Scrolling the Unscrollable

Demo file: scrolling-the-unscrollable.zip Howard Schlossberg’s presentation on popovers (FileMaker 13 Popovers) has inspired me on multiple occasions… a favorite takeaway is the idea that you can have a scrolling check box set within a popover. The trick is to size the field as tall as necessary to display all the values (this is an extreme […] View the full article

Reciprocal Linkage, part 3

I thought after part 2 that this technique had been thoroughly discussed and dissected, but Geoff Gerhard of Creative Solutions writes to point out that, if the goal is to have as few moving parts as possible, the table occurrence (TO) count can be further reduced, from four to three… …and has provided a demo […] View the full article

Reciprocal Linkage, part 2

This is a quick follow up to last week’s article on reciprocal (bi-directional) linking, and will assume the reader is familiar with that material. Paul Jansen of APJ Computing Solutions sent in a revision of one of my files demonstrating that, among other things, the graph could be a good deal leaner (as per my […] View the full article

Reciprocal Linkage

Challenge: in a multiuser document management system, facilitate the linking (and unlinking) of any document with any other. Make it clear which documents are linked to the current document, and make sure the approach is multiuser friendly — in other words, allow document records to be linked and unlinked even if one or both of […] View the full article

JSON Array + Virtual List

Over the last few postings we’ve been looking at using JSON with Virtual List… and prior to today, our focus has been on JSON structures using name/value pairs. Well today we’re going to switch our attention to basic JSON array structures. Demo file: json-array-plus-virtual-list.zip (requires FileMaker 16.02 or later) Apart from using JSON arrays instead […] View the full article

Virtual List Reporting + JSON

Today we’re going to look at an alternative approach to the multi-window VLR technique we examined last month in Virtual List Reporting part 3, utilizing and extending techniques introduced in last month’s JSON + Virtual List. To avoid needless repetition, today’s article will assume the reader is familiar with that material. Demo files: vlr-plus-json-v1 and […] View the full article

JSON + Virtual List, part 2

Demo file: json-plus-virtual-list-part-2.zip This is a short follow-up to part 1, to demonstrate an alternative idea re: JSON date encoding. As you may recall, JSON does not have a “date” type, and one of our goals is to encode and decode JSON dates in a region-agnostic manner (e.g., encode in a region where MM/DD/YYYY is […] View the full article

JSON + Virtual List

One nice thing about FileMaker being on a yearly release cycle is that there is always something new to learn and write about… and, having just attended a couple highly informative sessions on the topic of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) at Devcon 2017 — thank you Todd Geist and Anders Monsen — it is clear […] View the full article

FM 16: Pseudo Indexing

During our recent discussion of SortValues and UniqueValues, I made passing reference to an article I wrote a few years ago on the topic of “pseudo indexing“, i.e., displaying a list of unique values for a specific field for a found set, rather than for all records. Well today we’re going to dust the pseudo […] View the full article

Windowing in FM 16: First Impressions

9 May 2017: Today’s release of FileMaker 16 introduces new windowing options, and changes to existing windowing behavior… some of these are cross-platform, and one is specific to FileMaker for Windows. Demo file: FM-16-Windowing.zip (requires FM 16 or later) Cross-Platform Changes Change #1. Redesigned “New Window” dialog Note the new “Card” window style — I’ll […] View the full article

Export Field Contents (Update for FM 16)

In the article “An In-Depth Look at “Export Field Contents” (here), the study of how FileMaker exports text as single field contents is compared to the standard FileMaker Exports. Some of these present a problem when the field (exported) gets converted to something which a receiving system may reject as invalid. Several methods and alternative […] View the full article

User-Friendly Excel Exports, part 6

Recently I was asked to implement user-friendly Excel exports on a WAN-based solution, utilizing some of the techniques explored earlier in this series (part 1, part 1.1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 — all from five years ago). There was just one problem: while performance was great locally, and okay on a LAN, it was […] View the full article

PDF with Embedded Links

Author’s note: I’d like to offer a big thank you to Christian Schmitz of Monkeybread Software, not only for creating and continually improving a fantastic plug-in, but also for promptly and patiently answering my many questions. A few weeks ago we looked at creating a table of contents for a PDF containing nine individual reports. […] View the full article

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