Demo file: virtual-list-simplified.zip Note 1: The example in today’s article/demo is intentionally very basic. Note 2: The demo is self-populating to keep the data current, so the values you see in the screen shots will not exactly match those you encounter in the demo. Recently I had the pleasure of discussing virtual list with Paul… Continue reading Virtual List Simplified
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As 2019 draws to a close, I am mildly astonished to note that FileMaker Hacks is now nine years old. As promised in my recent conversation with Jeremy Brown, and in response to a number of reader requests, here, for the first time, is a comprehensive table of contents (as of December 2019). While some… Continue reading Table Of Contents for FileMaker Hacks
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As 2019 draws to a close, I am mildly astonished to note that FileMaker Hacks is now nine years old. As promised in my recent conversation with Jeremy Brown, and in response to a number of reader requests, here, for the first time, is a comprehensive table of contents. While some of these articles have… Continue reading Table Of Contents for FileMaker Hacks
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Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Introduction This is a quick follow-up to last month’s article on 2-Column Magic Value Lists, and, to avoid repetition, will assume the reader is familiar with that material. A colleague pointed out that… Continue reading 2-Column Magic Value Lists, part 2
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Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Introduction This is a quick follow-up to last month’s article on 2-Column Magic Value Lists, and, to avoid repetition, will assume the reader is familiar with that material. A colleague pointed out that… Continue reading 2-Column Magic Value Lists, part 2
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Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Acknowledgements: today’s article would not have been written without the inspiration provided by Bruce Robertson, John Ahn (FM 12 ExecuteSQL Unconference Session), Andries Heylen (Magic Value Lists), Marcelo Piñeyro (How to Extend FileMaker… Continue reading 2-Column Magic Value Lists
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Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Acknowledgements: today’s article would not have been written without the inspiration provided by Bruce Robertson, John Ahn (FM 12 ExecuteSQL Unconference Session), Andries Heylen (Magic Value Lists), Marcel Pinyero (How to Extend FileMaker… Continue reading 2-Column Magic Value Lists
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Disclaimer: the technique shown in this article is provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Demo file: JSON-Array-Custom-Functions.zip (requires FM 18 or later) Have you ever noticed that FileMaker does not provide a JSON function to insert a new element into an existing array? For example, given this… Continue reading FM18: JSON.InsertArrayElement
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Disclaimer: the technique shown in this article is an attempt to work around an annoyance that can crop up when using FileMaker’s native JSONSetElement function. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk. Acknowledgement: I owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Jansen for many illuminating JSON-related discussions over the last year or so.… Continue reading FM18: JSON.UpdateArrayElement
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Recently I was working in FM 17 and ran into an unexpected bug. My use case was more complex than this, but the following bare bones demo illustrates the problem. Demo file: List+GetNthRecordBug.zip Given two tables joined via a standard primary-key-to-foreign-key equijoin relationship… This works as expected. You might think you could get rid of… Continue reading Fixed in 18: List + GetNthRecord Bug
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Today we’re going to dig a little deeper into the new-in-18 While function, and to avoid repetition, will assume readers are familiar with last month’s article on SetRecursion and While. We’ll examine some new examples ranging from basic to advanced, talk about the circumstances under which While can use variables previously declared via Let, and […]
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Author’s note: Inevitable comparisons will be drawn between the new While function and the venerable CustomList custom function, which I wrote about at length several years ago. Preliminary testing indicates that CustomList is faster under certain circumstances and While is faster under others. In my opinion, both of them belong in your developer tool kit. […]
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Today we’re going to look at a design pattern I’ve recently been using to accommodate a client requirement: to be able to view and edit a parent, all related children, and all related grandchildren via a single “flattened” interface. Demo file: magic-portals.zip (requires FM 16 or later) Some Background Information Invoices received from vendors are […]
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Editor’s note: Geoff Gerhard of Creative Solutions is one of those “quiet” developers who has been helpfully sharing his knowledge in online FileMaker forums for more than 20 years. I personally have benefited enormously from his expertise, and am pleased to feature his first appearance as a guest author here on FileMaker Hacks. Demo file: […]
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Today I want to talk about a potential problem lurking in a small percentage of FileMaker solutions, and discuss various options for mitigating it. As you may know, there are three ways to display a new window… Via the New Window script step Via the Go To Related Record script step Manually via Window > […]
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Editor’s note: I first became aware of Paul Jansen when I licensed his FMTools in the late 1990s, and I finally had the pleasure of meeting him last June at dotFMP after 20 years of online and voice communication. It’s an honor and a privilege to welcome him to FileMaker Hacks as a guest author. […]
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It’s been a few years since we last had a tips ‘n’ tricks article here at FileMaker Hacks… long enough for some new items to accumulate in the old developer bag of tricks. (If you like this sort of thing, you may also want to check out part 1 and part 2.) Some of these […]
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Recently we’ve looked at two methods to generate a “faux” subsummary to address a shortcoming of FileMaker native subsummaries… namely that in a multipage report you can have orphaned entries at the top of a given page with no indication of what parent entity they belong to. The methods were documented here: Conditional Summary Report […]
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Today we’re going to take another look at a challenge we discussed last time (in Conditional Summary Report Header)… namely how to cajole FileMaker into displaying a subsummary, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, at the top of a report page when items in the group begin on an earlier page. Demo file: Faux Subsummaries via […]
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Recently I received an email wondering… When printing a multipage report sorted by a sub-summary, is there a way to display the sub-summary heading on the following page when it breaks across two or more pages? There are various approaches one might take, and I actually buried one of those approaches inside an article + […]
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This a quick followup to last month’s part 2, because today I want to to dig a little deeper into JSONSetElement and take a closer look at the first argument: As I wrote last time… Part of what makes JSONSetElement so powerful is that it can be used both to create new entries, and to […]
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This is a follow up to Thinking About JSON, Part 1. Last time we were primarily concerned with learning about JSON paths and structures, and reading JSON. This time around we’re going to look at creating and manipulating JSON. Demo file: winery-json.zip (If the above screen shot looks familiar you have a good memory, because […]
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Acknowledgement: As always a huge thank you to Bruce Robertson, for inventing virtual list, and for many other contributions to the FM community over the years. Introduction As a follow up to my recent “Virtual List on Steroids” presentations at DIG-FM and dotFMP, today I want to take a fresh look at using JSON arrays […]
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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 […]
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Here are files that may be demoed or referred to during my “Virtual List on Steroids” DIG-FM presentation on Thursday, May 10th, 2018 (VLR = “virtual list reporting). Demo Files Step One – Admitting There’s A Problem VLR, part 2 (on Steroids) VLR + JSON Array, v1 [new] VLR + JSON Array, v2 [new] VLR […]
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