Shell Script Fun

[bruceR]

The attached file demonstrates simple integration of unix shell scripting with FileMaker.

It takes a list of values, sorts them, finds the unique values, and counts the occurrences of each unique value, and presents the top 5 to you.

By itself this is a minor trick but it has interesting implications for reporting and other applications. It requires a Mac running OSX.

When you try it, try using PartNumber as the selected field for your query. Note that the file will also summarize values from a second file if you have any other database open.

The applescript looks like this:

choose from list (get name of every field)

set whichfield to item 1 of result

set theData to field whichfield of document 1

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ASCII character 10

Set shellStuff to " | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -5"

do shell script "echo " & quoted form of (theData as text) & shellstuff

display dialog result

SaleData.zip

[bruceR]

This is a very powerful, fast, versatile technique that can substantially simplify report generation. Get summary data almost instantly from ANY open database without writing scripts or layouts in the target database.

[Mandu]

VERY slick! I learned some neat Applescript tricks here.

Know any other Filemaker > BSD > Filemaker tricks? :-)

[bruceR]

Yup. How about exporting your data to a specified file name?

Go To Layout [someLayout]

Copy All records

Perform applescript

copy cell "gFileName" to fileName

-- assumes you have pre-populated it

-- with your desired flle name

-- don't put this field on the layout

-- you are copying records from

Do shell script "pbpaste > ~/desktop/" & fileName & ".txt"

[Mandu]

Sweet!

I notice that it makes use of certain special ASCII characters in some cases - translating LF/CR to VT (x0b) and using GS (x1d) for some purpose I haven't figured out yet (repeating field separator?) As long as those things aren't lost completely in the process, though, I'm happy. :-)

Very nice. Thanks!