Interesting FileMaker techniques

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Save to PDF in Filemaker Runtimes? - Yes

I needed to export a report to PDF in one of our runtime solutions.

As we all know, it's not possible in FileMaker as PDF export script steps won't run in runtime solutions.

But I created a little workaround I'd like to share.

So what you need:

A global container field.

That's all.

1) When you do the report - enter preview mode on the report layout(be sure to set the page setup, etc).

2) Copy script step - Copy script step in preview mode copies the report to the clipboard(screenshot like)

3) Enter browse mode - go to the layout where you have that global field

4) Paste the clipboard to that global container field

5) Export field contents (the global container field).

Hey, there you have the pdf file from the runtime! Cool?

Note: It's basically for one page reports, but you can create a screen shot of every page of the report to a different container field (go to record-next in preview) and export those too.

I attached a sample file, which you can download here. You can create a runtime solution from it using FileMaker Pro Advanced.

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

The material on this document is offered as is. There is no representation or warranty, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this post. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Tweet with FileMaker (simple method, Win+Mac, No Curl)

In the following article, I would like to demonstrate how you can update your twitter status with filemaker using a very simple method.

Recently I see a solution floating around which uses CURL to do this, but it's Mac only, and why use curl, if we don't need it?

We'll just use a simple web viewer to do this.

First we need to understand how we can update our status using twitter API. You can check this here.

If we have this, we just need to create a web viewer, with a post html form, and a so called "self-posting" javascript code in it.

This is it:

"data:text/html," &
"<html>
<head>
<script>
function PostMe() {document.getElementById(\"myform\").submit();}
</script>
</head>
<body onload=\"PostMe()\">
<form id=\"myform\" method=\"post\" action=\"http://" & FmPostTwit::UserName_Global & ":" & FmPostTwit::PassWord_Global & "@twitter.com/statuses/update.xml\" enctype=\"application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8\" accept-charset=\"UTF-8\">
<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"status\" value=\"" & FmPostTwit::Status_Global & "\">
</form>
</body>
</html>"

Let's take a look at it.

The "data:text/html," part is to let the web viewer have inner html content(the form).

The next part is the javascript code, which will post the form when it loads.

The last part is the html form, with the needed input (status- hidden).

This will be put into a web viewer(object name vw) by the Set Web Viewer Script step- Go To URL.

So basically the one line code is:

Set Web Viewer[Object Name:vw; URL: here comes the html code from above]

That's all.

I attached a sample file, which you can download here.

Please check it, and use this technique it if you like it.

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Importing Twitter Friend Timeline into FileMaker

In the following article, I would like to demonstrate how you can use the twitter api to import your friends' timeline into FileMaker. We will come up with something like this:

We're going to use XML importing for this.

The fields we need in the database:

screen_name

text

profile_image_url (just for fun)

If you're not familiar with twitter api, and the xml it gives back please check this page first:

So, we can get the timeline xml with the following url:

http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml

(where of cource username is your twitter username and the password is your twitter password)

You can set other parameters as well (for example count: http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml?count=50 if you want the last 50 tweets)

But FileMaker cannot handle this xml yet.

We need an XSL file to convert it to a format that FileMaker can understant. It's a quite simple XSL I came up with. You can download it from here. (Be sure to download the file, not open it (right click- Save as - twitter2fmp.xsl)

We need to save this file somewhere, or upload it to a webserver. I chose the second method.

Now we can do the import script. It's quite simple as well, just one script step:

Import Records [No Dialog; http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml?count=50;http://website.com/twitter2fmp.xsl; Update matching; Mac Roman]

That's all.

The update matching is to ensure that no duplicate tweet is put into the tweets table.

Now you can create a simple list layout, or create a portal if you wish to display the the results.

I attached a sample file, which you can download here.

Please check it, and use this technique it if you like it.

Don't forget to fill your username and password!

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

Friday, December 18, 2009

FileMaker 8+ gradient progress bar with one field - without containers

In the following article I will share a technique that I implemented in our current development, which needed FM8 techniques, as our client currently uses that.

I needed a progress bar, which looks great to show a script progress on a found set.

I didn't want to use containers and started thinking about how I would be able to create the progress bar without them.

Here's what I came up with:

The progress bar is a simple repeating field calculation(text) with 100 repetitions.

It uses the following calculation:

Let ( [r1=123;g1=80;b1=200;r2=10;g2=180;b2=50] ;

If ( Truncate ( (Get(RecordNumber)/Get(FoundCount)) * 100 ; 0) ≥ Get ( CalculationRepetitionNumber );

TextColor ( "█" ;RGB(

r1 + Floor((Get ( CalculationRepetitionNumber ) * (r2 - r1) / 100));

g1 + Floor((Get ( CalculationRepetitionNumber ) * (g2 - g1) / 100));

b1 + Floor((Get ( CalculationRepetitionNumber ) * (b2 - b1) / 100))

)

);""))

The first part of it is a LET calculation where I set up the beginning and the ending RGB colors, which will be used to calculate the actual repetition font color. The second part is a percentage calculator based on the current record and the found set.

The last part is used to calculate the actual RGB color.

The layout is simple, I just added the 100 repetitions, resized it, and set the font size to 72 points. I also added a fill color to the containers, that is what you can see under the gradient bar.

By modifying the rgb values you can come up with any color gradient you like:

I attached a sample file where you can find the calculation, investigate it, etc.

You can download it here.

Please check the demo file, and use this technique it if you like it.

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Moving in your previous FileMaker found sets

In the following article I will share a technique that I implemented in our CRM system quite long time ago. It's about getting back to your previous found sets.

The main part of most business softwares is the Search part, by which you can create complex search requests (extending existing lists, constraining, etc).

The main problem is that once you did a search and got a search result, you cannot get back to your previous list, or the one before that one, etc.

We faced this problem, and tried to implement a method by which you can move back and forward in your previous 5 (can be increased... see below) found sets.

FileMaker makes this quite easy, as a new table occurrence of the same table can hold a different found set!

So here is the technique. (Be sure to download the demo file I attached, so the you can understand this!)

You need to create five(or as many found sets you want to keep) table occurrence of your result table. In the example I attached It's the clients table.

So I created Clients_1, Clients_2, Clients_3, Clients_4, Clients_5 table occurrences in the relational graph and created 5 empty layouts with the same name (the source table of them was the appropriate table occurrence!).

Then I created two global fields, ( CurrentFoundSet_Global- This one is to know which found set we are currently on, and TotalFoundSet_Global- This one holds how many founds sets have been saved already).

The next step is the [SRTN]- SaveFoundSet script, which saves the current found set to the appropriate place, and checks if we have reached the highest value we can keep. If we did then it shifts the found sets left, so we loose the very first one.

This is done by the Go To Related Record script step on the appropriate layouts.

The [SRTN] - RestoreFoundSet script is to restore a found set.

There are two other scripts which are attached to the Restore Previous and Restore next buttons. (RestorePrevious,RestoreNext).

The saving happens at the search layout, in the [PANE]- Main bar script.

I attached a sample file where you can find these scripts, you can download it here.

Here is how you can try this:

1) Click on the Search Pane

2) Enter a "a" in the FirstName field, then press Enter

3) Go to the Search Pane again

4) Enter a "b" in the FirstName field, press enter

5) Go to the Seach Pane again

6) Enter a "c" in the FirstName, press enter

7) Now you can navigate backward in you found sets, and see the results.

This can be improved, modified, just wanted to share the basic idea of this thing. Please check the demo file, and use this technique it if you like it.

Note: In the sample file I used Brian Dunning's sample data file.

Note2: The original idea came from this article by Danny Dawson, worth reading!

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

QuickTip: Creating a drop down list from an unstored calculation

The following technique is a quick tip, which may be known by some, but I needed it so many times in our current development that I thought I would share it.

If you have ever tried to create a value list from an unstored field, you may have noticed the following error message that filemaker gives you:

This means that our value list based on this calculation won't work.

What can we do now? Don't give up!

It's really simple.

If you have an ID field in your table (auto enter, serial), create a relation based on this field to itself like this:

(ID=ID)

The next thing to do is to modify the value list, so that it only includes values from this relation:

If you press OK now, you will still see the error message appear, but the value list will work now.

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Speeding up related record creation with importing

The following technique can be used when you have to create related records on a huge found set.

What is the main problem?

FileMaker can be really slow when you manually create many related records using a script, and we faced this when we developed our mass action (bulk mailing, exporting) part of our FileMaker based CRM. (Note: in our CRM there are two other related tables in which we needed related record creation which made things much worse)

Let's say you have client table, which has about 100.000 records. You also have a related table called History, which is to hold the events that happened to the clients.

If you try to add a history record to all clients in the found set, you'll have a script like this:

Freeze window

Go to Layout[Clients]

Go to Record/Request/Page[First]

Loop

Set Variable[$clientid;Clients::ClientID]

Go to Layout[History]

New record/request

Set Field[History::ClientID;$clientid]

Set Field[History::Event;"Client exported by user"]

Go to Layout[Clients]

Go to record/request/page [next, exit after last]

End Loop

It's an easy related record adder script which adds a "Client exported by user" text to the History table(it's related to the Clients table).

This would work well on small found sets. But when you try this on a big found set, you'll find yourself waiting for ages (and things get worse if we speak about a shared database and online usage).

How could it be sped up?

This is where exporting and importing can be a good solution, as you may noticed these functions create records much much faster.

This is how our script should be modified:

We'll need a global text field at the Clients table, where we set the "Client exported by user" text, let's call this Event_Global.

Now we can do an export on the clients table (we only need ClientID, and the Event_Global) to a temp directory in FP7 format.

After this we go to the History layout (and also table) and import that exported file as the following:

Clients::ClientID to History::ClientID

Clients::Event_Global to History::Event

And we're done.

So the modified script is the following:

Freeze Window

Set Field[Clients::Event_Global;"Client exported by user" ]

Set Variable [$path; Get(TemporaryPath) & "export.fp7"]

Export Records[No dialog; "$path"] //Note: here you need to add field Event_Global and ClientID

Go to Layout[History]

Import Records[No dialog;"$path";Add;Mac Roman]

Go to Layout[Original Layout]

And that's all.

So first we set the global field, then generate a path using Get(TemporaryPath) and save it to the $path variable.

Then we export the fields, go to the History layout and import it into the history fields.

Note: You need to be sure to set up both the export and import orders correctly!

Note2: Do not store sensitive data in temporary files, or if you have to make sure you delete it immediately after the script has finished!

Please visit our site, http://crm.fm which has our main FileMaker product, and support us by buying it. Thanks!