Please comment my thoughts

[fundidor]

I have been learning FMP6 for the last 8 months, and have done some considerable progress.

But I would appreciate very much to read your comments.

I have a set of six DataBases related to each other that I use in my small business to print invoices, control the guys who haven't payed me yet, notify my customers when they are due, etc...

Last week I took on the task to get my DataBase to notify my customers with an html-enclosed-email containing the items, prices, sub totals and Total of their purchases.

Why html-email? Because I was using a script to "print to pdf" and attach to the email. But some of customers, PcUsers sometimes replied "can't open your attachment" or "my anti-virus says the attachment represents a risk to my Pc".

The first big problem was to get the information out of my DataBase, then get Applescript to write a text file, and get PostFix to send the email.

Ok. I created a layout and tryed to make "clone fields" of the desired field (just calculating this field is equal to another field) I wanted. Didn't work. The clone field would get the first value entered in field, and in case the field were edited, the "clone field" would not refresh. The old vakue would remain.

My work around was to make a clone database, and link the fields on the clone to the master database, get a script to run when closing the database that would "clear all fields" > " delete all records". This way when opening this database, the fields would allways be empty.

The next step of the work around was to get a relationship between the clone database to the master, just linking the ID of each record. Done.

Now every time the clone database would open, it would get the "id" from the clipboard, paste in the field, and get a "refreshed" copy of the fields I needed. And copy these fields values to the clipboard.

So this is how it finally got work. I ran a script in the master database that would copy the id of the current record to the clipboard and open the clone database, the id would be pasted automatically in the clone, the values copied to the clipboard, and the original script from the master database would take care of closing the clone database.

This was my workaround to refresh a fields content.

The same script would run also an external Applescript App that would take my values from the clipboard, assemble the text file needed for the html-email, show me the sample and ask me to hit an ok button.

I wonder if I am just working this too much. And would like to know how you would have done this.

My routines are 100% functional.

Questions:

Is there another way to get a related field to refresh itself?

Would you use the clipboard to get data out of Filemaker to an Applescript?

Is there another way of getting data from Filemaker into an Applescript app?

Thanks!

[Helpful Harry]

I'm not really sure I actually understand what you're trying to do, but still ...

Bernardo H

[bruceR]

Bernardo H

[fundidor]

Dear Bruce and Harry,

I thank you very much for posting. will consider your advices on my next project.

[bruceR]

By the way, know anybody last name Fabbri in the computing business there in Brazil?