Auto create a each year repeating date like a birthdate to show up in a calendar using a birthdate field.

[Mark Jones]

First off I am not a programmer.  I am a woodworker that gets clunky stuff to work.  GRIN!  So I have a calendar in my Church Boy Scouts Program called the Ranger Database.  I am not for profit but have been doing this since Filemaker 3.0.  I enjoy making clunky stuff that serves the needs of our Royal Rangers.  I am using FM 18 Advanced and still publishing solutions.

My eyes are bloodshot looking for a idea on how to make a date like 01-28-1959  automatically show up each year by only one data entry.  Have a field next to the date field that says Annual date and it would then create on the fly that same date for the next 10 years.  

I would appreciate a nudge in the right direction on this.  Any help is very much appreciated. 

Thanks!

 

Mark Jones

[comment]

6 hours ago, Mark Jones said:

how to make a date like 01-28-1959  automatically show up each year by only one data entry

I am assuming that by "show up" you mean show up on the "many" side of some relationship, where the match field on the "one" side can have a value of 01-28-1982 or 01-28-2005 or Jan 28 in any year? If my assumption is correct, then this would rule out a solution where the result is unstored (such as a calculation field that would dynamically produce the date of Jan 28 in the currently viewed year).

So how do you produce a stored result? The simple solution to make a date "annual" would be to split it into two fields - a field for day and a field for month - and make the relationship match on both these fields. This would make the date related in ANY year of the 4000 years that Filemaker allows. However, this would also require a separate relationship for dates that are deemed "annual". 

If you want the same relationship to include both "regular" and "annual" dates, then you need to generate the additional dates - either by calculation or by script - and that means that there will be a fixed number of them. 

Here's a skeleton demo showing how you could make a user-entered date repeat for up to 10 following years. Of course the range can be easily expanded - even to the full 4000 years. Note that the calculation field's result type is Date, in order to eliminate a possible discrepancy between "01-28-2022" and "1-28-2022".

 

 

AnnualDates.fmp12

Edited December 17, 2022 by comment

[comment]

As @LaRetta was kind enough to remind me, one needs to consider what to do with dates that fall on February 29 in a leap year. My demo will show them on March 1 of a non-leap year. If that's not the wanted result, then there's a bit more work to be done.

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by comment

[Mark Jones]

Thanks so much.  You and LaRetta have been so helpful for so many years.  What seems so easy for you both is a world away from my mind.  Thanks for sharing your gifts in this area.  

Will chew this over and over and over again and see if I can clunk this into my calendar program.  

Appreciate the time and good work. 

Mark Jones