Merging?

nightdesigns · January 3, 2001

Is there a way to automatically export into a form and dump to clipboard?

Situation, i have a bunch of fields used for e-bay, and i'd like to have it automatically drop all the fields into a html template that i can just paste (it doesn't have to go to an external program, just to clipboard)

Hopefully you can make sense of that.

Thanks

File Maker Pro Version 5

BobWeaver · January 10, 2001

Are you trying to take unformatted data from the fields and put an html formatted version into the clipboard?

nightdesigns · January 10, 2001

That would be the idea. I'm trying to avoid the step of merging into something like word and then having to copy.

BobWeaver · January 10, 2001

I would start by creating the html template with dummy data for the fields using something like Claris Homepage. So, you would get something like this:

<html blah blah...> field1 <html blah blah...> field2 <html blah blah...> field3 <html blah blah...> etc.

Create some global text fields in your database. Then copy from your html template from the beginning to where field1 begins, and paste it into the first global. Then copy everything from the end of field1 to the beginning of field2 and paste it into the second global, and so on until you have all of the html code copied over. Your globals now contain the html formatting stuff. Then to format your data, make a calculated field called Html with the following calculation:

Html = global1 & field1 & global2 & field2 &global3 & field3 & global4 ... etc.

At this point you can create a script that simply copies from the Html field.

nightdesigns · January 10, 2001

I think i get what you're saying. Create (hidden) fields with all my HTML formatting. Then create a script that combines all the fields i need into the order i need and have it dump it into a final field which i can copy. Correct?

BobWeaver · January 11, 2001

Yes.

nightdesigns · January 11, 2001

I got it to work, took a bit of toying around and a few choice words at the computer, but i got it. I created a calculation field. Basically has the formatting text, and then the fields in it. Down side, calc fields (along with any other type of calc field can only be 253 characters), so i ended up making 11 fields (some w/ fields inserted, some with not). I created a 12th field to add all those together. I made sure that it didn't store the result to the file, ebcause it would have gotten huge. Server is fast enough to do the calcs as needed. Then set up a button to click when the user wants it dumped to clipboard.

Thanks

BobWeaver · January 12, 2001

I forgot about the 253 character limit. Curiously, this limit does not apply to all calculations. If you use the Set Field instruction in a script, you can use text functions with much larger amounts of text. I use a script that imports and parses all of my email messages which are typically in the 3k to 5k size range. The size restrictions don't seem to be very well documented in the manual.

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