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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Recently, in a virtual list report, I had a need to sort on rep number 2 of a repeating field called cell_text_r. FileMaker does not offer an obvious way to script a sort on a field rep > 1, and I had worked around the problem in the past by A. defining some special non-repeating […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Editor’s note: Once again it is an honor and a privilege to present an in-depth guest article written by Beverly Voth. This is a follow-up to the User-Friendly Excel Exports series by Kevin Frank, but using an XML export along with various XSLT to give you .csv or .xls (for Excel). The first demo is […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Last year I posted a couple articles on the topic of virtual list reporting (part 1 and part 2), a.k.a. VLR. Today we’re going to look at some additional things you can do with VLR, and to avoid a lot of repetition, this article will assume the reader is familiar with the material covered in […]
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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 […]
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Today we’re going to look at two functions introduced in FileMaker 16: SortValues and UniqueValues, and you may want to download and follow along in this demo file: FM 16 – SortValues & UniqueValues (5 Mb, requires FM 16 or later) Each of these functions operates on a return-delimited list of values, and the names […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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This is a follow up to last week’s part 6, with three refinements. Demo 1 (Excel Exports, v7a) – fixes a numeric formatting bug Demo 2 (Excel Exports, v7b) – offers a more flexible Excel export “save” dialog Demo 3 (Excel Exports, v7c) – uses ExecuteSQL to reduce the # of TOs on the RG […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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A few years back I did an article on producing a PDF catalog + table of contents, with the TOC based on a vendor table and the catalog entries based on a products table. Today we’re going to use a different approach to generate a table of contents, and it builds on techniques explored in […]
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Editor’s note: Today I’m pleased to present a guest article and accompanying demo file written by Joel Englander on using ExecuteSQL + a global multi-line key as an alternative to FileMaker’s built-in portal filtering mechanism, with dynamic portal sorting included as an added bonus. Demo file: fm-sqlportal-filter-and-dynsort.zip (75 Mb compressed, 230 Mb uncompressed) Portal Filtering […]
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Given its primary role as a database product, it’s easy sometimes to forget what a great teaching tool FileMaker Pro can be. One of my favorite educational uses for it is building models to explore problem spaces, for example… viewing all possible outcomes for a problem with boundary conditions conducting trials to confirm the likelihood […]
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