Embrace JSON

With the next MBS FileMaker Plugin release, we will embrace JSON functions for our FileMaker plugin. As more developers now learn JSON, we can now return you more data as JSON. Instead of making dozens of calls to query all information about a field in a PDF document, you may just want to call DynaPDF.GetFieldsAsJSON and get details for all fields in one chunk and then pick what you need. On the way we made similar functions for annotations, bookmarks, color spaces, doc information, embedded files, fields, fonts and system font information:

As the new function barcode function for DynaPDF came along, we pass there all parameters via JSON. Check DynaPDF.InsertBarcode function to insert a barcode in the current open page. We provide the DynaPDF.GetDefaultBarcodeParameters function to get default parameters, where you can just take that JSON and then make changes, before inserting it.

For listing files, we add a Files.ListAsJSON function to return not just the file names, but more information as an array of JSON objects. You can have file name, size, directory and visible flags included. If requested, we also include in creation, modification and access time stamps. By using JSON, we can later add more entries as needed.

When you use LDAP functions, you can get result as JSON block with LDAP.JSON function. You can add or modify records with LDAP.AddJSON or LDAP.ModifyJSON functions.

Our Archive functions can return JSON for file listing with Archive.FileList and full details with Archive.Content function.

For SQL functions, you can also use JSON to query what's currently in the record, in parameters or all records. You can also set parameters via JSON, e.g. to batch create records with an INSERT statement.

Finally for CURL you can use CURL.GetHeaderAsJSON function to query the headers of a HTTP Request as JSON object. As always, this allows us to pass you multiple items in one plugin call and then allow you to process the entries.

Let us know if you have questions or additional function ideas.


Xojo 2020r1.1

Xojo Inc. dropped an update for Xojo 2020r1: Download and Release Notes. It improves the web target with 32 bug fixes, 5 changes and 6 new things. This fixes the most urgent things in the Web 2 framework and is certainly welcome to get quick fixes there. Most welcome are Pressed events for WebLabel, WebImageViewer and WebCanvas. We hope in future to have an universal Pressed event for all controls, which carries additional parameters like modifier keys.

For desktop projects, you find a bug fix for the HTMLViewer issue Bob talked about. A text conversion bug was fixed, so we may encounter failed assertion in REALstring.cpp less frequent. Still we prefer those being exceptions and not assertions as we want to get a stack trace and show our bug reporter dialog. The fixes for Double.IsInfinite and Double.IsNotANumber make you wonder whether this functions have been tested at all by anyone before releasing. United tests may be a good for such basic functions! HTMLViewer on macOS can now pass floating values and the Linux IDE should now show the help even if some webkit library is missing.

In general the update is very welcome. Kudos for Xojo Inc. to do a .1 release and pushing the fixes to us without letting us wait months for the next bigger release.

As of today we have no idea what may come in r2 this year as Xojo Inc. hasn't announced anything in this regard. We do hope for a more bug fix orientated release. Web 2.0 and API 2.0 may have enough issues to keep engineers busy. Add a dozen bug fixes for long standing issues and we would be happy. As Apple is launching Apple Silicon soon, support for that target should be prioritized, so Xojo is ready and developers like us have a chance to test Xojo projects and our plugin functionality before Apple ships the hardware to customers. We already compiled 20.4 release for macOS with ARM 64-bit to make sure things do compile.

Playing with Machine Learning on Windows

We have started to look on the Windows Learning APIs to implement some functions for our plugins. Since 2017 we have CoreML functions for macOS. FileMaker 19 now ships similar functions built-in, but we think the plugin can still do more. As we are now using newer Visual Studio 2019, we can finally also check the Windows Learning functions:

You can use ONNX Models with the classes, so check the Microsoft website on how to get models. This mainly points to the ONNX Model Zoo, which has some interesting models available.

We started by porting the desktop SqueezeNetObjectDetection example from the Windows-Machine-Learning repository. You may want to download the SqueezeNet.onnx file from models folder and the kitten_224.png file from the media folder.

In Xojo you can use WinLearningModelMBS class to load a model with the Load function. Then query details and the input/output features to learn what the model does. Once you want to use the model, create WinLearningModelSessionMBS and WinLearningModelBindingMBS objects. The last one is used to assign values to the input and output elements. Then you Evaluate the model and get a WinLearningModelEvaluationResultMBS object and there you query the result values.

For FileMaker we embrace JSON and use it to pass values for the new WindowsML functions. Use WindowsML.Open to load the model and query all information about it with WindowsML.Description function. Use bind functions like WindowsML.BindImageFile to assign input image, run the model with WindowsML.Evaluate function and then you get a result as JSON. You may use our JSON functions to work on the result and show it to the user.

A difference between the macOS/iOS implementation by Apple and the one by Microsoft is the missing of labels for the latter. For Windows you get a Labels.txt file with the list of what index in the result points to what label they mean. Our example code will show how to handle this.

Those functions and new classes are coming for next pre-release versions in October 2020. We may get a good start set and may add more as needed later. Especially as we learn what other models may need as input and output features.


FileMaker iOS SDK in Version 19 and MBS Plugin

When you try the FileMaker iOS SDK from FileMaker 19 and you like to use our plugin, you may need to follow some simple steps:

  • You download the SDK in the Claris Community. Login and developer membership needed. For this blog post we use iOSAppSDKPackage in version 19.0.10088.
  • After expanding, you may remove quarantine for the folder with Terminal and xattr command:
    xattr -cr /Users/cs/Desktop/iOSAppSDKPackage_19.0.10088
  • We run the "./makeprojdir test test de.monkeybreadsoftware.test" command in the Terminal in the folder to create the project files for our test project. Please change your identifier and project name.
  • The project opens in Xcode and we can pick a target simulator and just run it.
  • In project settings (click first item in the left side list), pick the tab "Signing & Capabilities" and select your bundle identifier and your team. Xcode may repair certificates if needed.
  • We use plugins as frameworks (Requirement for iOS App Store), so we create a Frameworks folder in the project folder next to the Plug-Ins folder. Please copy the simulation version of the MBS.fmplugin.framework there, optionally for push notifications the MBSInit.framework one, too.
  • Drag & Drop the Frameworks folder into the project items list in left side of the Xcode window. In the popup make sure the copy checkbox is cleared, add to target has your target name checked and create folder references is checked. The Frameworks folder appears in blue in the side list, not orange.
  • After building you can right click on the app in the Product folder in the left side bar and show it in Finder. Then look inside the package and check if Frameworks folder has the MBS Plugin file.
  • You can do code signing of our plugin before or while building. To do it while building, you can go to project settings (click first item in the left side list), then click Build Phases tab and there scroll down to "Install and Codesign Plugins" section. There edit the script by changing Plugins to Frameworks in the path used there:
    find "${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/${WRAPPER_NAME}/Frameworks" -depth 1 -print0 | while read -d $'\0' path; do
    codesign -f -s "${CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY}" "$path"
    done
  • Now run it and the plugin should show as installed plugin.
  • To make MBSInit.framework ask for notification, you go to the General tab of project settings. There is a section for "Frameworks, Libraries and, Embedded Content". There you can click plus button on the bottom and select the MBSInit framework. The Embed setting should be Embed & Sign. When this is done, the dialog shows up.

Trouble Shooting

  • You may need to buy an Apple Developer membership. Please don't do this with your normal Apple ID, but make a newer one, e.g. developer@YourCompany.com
  • MBS Plugin in version 10.4 for iOS is broken and won't load. Sorry, we made a linking error. Use older or newer version. 10.5pr1 should come early October.
  • In Xcode preferences dialog, please login to your apple developer account. So the repair features can work in Xcode with all the certificates.
  • The plugin will load unsigned in simulator, but device only loads signed plugins.
  • For App Store the application and plugins need all be signed using the same certificate and provided as .framework in the Frameworks folder. If you have the plugin in Plugins folder, the automatic tests for App Store will reject the application.
  • If compilation fails, just hit run again or please use Clean command first and build again. Often this repairs an issue.
  • When quitting simulator, the iOS app may crash and break into debugger. Just ignore it and press stop button.
  • Each version of the FileMaker SDK is built with a specific Xcode version. Best you use that version to build your app and you may not upgrade Xcode as that may break it.

See older blog posts and video:

Please do not hesitate to contact us with questions.



What is new in the MBS FileMaker Plugin Version 10.4

In this article I want to introduce you the new functions from the MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 10.4.

CURL 

Let's start with the changes in the CURL component. Here are some new functions that give us information about CURL connections. With the function CURL.GetOptionURL we get the value of the current URL. The function CURL.GetOptionCustomRequest queries current custom request value and with the CURL.GetOptionPostFields function you can get the current post fields values. The function CURL.GetOptionUserName returns the name of the current user. 

 

You can also use the CURL.GetRetryAfter function to query the Retry-After retry delay time you get from the header. This time tells you in how many seconds you can expect the next retry from the server. 

 

Another new function is CURL.GetEffectiveMethod. This function returns the last used effective HTTP method

 

SSH KeepAlive

The SSH.ConfigureKeepAlive function enables or disables sending KeepAlive messages over a SSH connection. In the parameters you can specify how often KeepAlive message are sent. Please specify how many seconds to wait before sending a keep alive message. If a zero is entered here, the sending of KeepAlive messages is disabled. 


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News from the MBS Xojo Plugins Version 20.4

In this article I want to introduce you the new functionalities from the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 20.4.

The new FileMaker Plugin 

Our plugins welcome a new plugin in their circle, the FMAPI plugin. With this plugin you can use Claris FileMaker Server Data or Admin APIs from Xojo. 

With instances of the FMDataMBS you get a connection to the FileMaker Server. For the login you need user name and password or OAuthRequestId and OAuthIdentifier for oAuth. A connection attempt can look like this: 

Dim d As New FMDataMBS

 

d.Password = "admin"

d.Username = "admin"

d.Server   = "localhost"

d.Database = "test"

 

Dim r As FMResponseMBS = d.Login

 

We can then run searches on this connected database, read, modify, add, duplicate and delete records. We pass queries to the database to the appropriate functions. These are instances of the class FMRequestMBS with various details. On return we get result objects of class FMResponseMBS.


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Connect to Claris FileMaker Server from Xojo via Data API

With MBS Xojo Plugins 20.4 we include a new MBS Xojo FMAPI Plugin part with a few new classes to connect to a Claris FileMaker Server:

The FMDataMBS class does a Data API connection while the FMAdminMBS class provides methods for the Admin API. Both have FMConnectionMBS as base class for the core functionality to connect.

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Seven months till XDC 2021 in London

Just seven months till the XDC 2021 in London, England. Tickets are still available for $750 USD till 1st October 2020 1st April 2021 instead of $950 later.

It will be held April 21-23, 2021 October 13-15, 2021 March 30-April 1st, 2022 in London, England at the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury. This conferences is the best place to meet Xojo developers from around the world in real live, make contacts, present yourself as expert and learn what is new in Xojo. Tickets are available in the Xojo store and if you bring your partner, you can order an extra guest ticket for the dinner events.

Check out the conference highlights video if you want to see what it's like - or ask one of the many attendees from the forum!

Wether you are full or part time Xojo developer, this is your chance to learn all about the Web 2.0 framework, the Android progress and what's new in the Xojo world.

To get there, please use public transportation. The piccadilly line brings you right from Heathrow Airport to Russell Square Station, just next to the hotel. That trip should cost about 3 £ and you may just pay by tap in/out with your NFC enabled credit card or phone. Otherwise buy an Oyster card and load money on it if you don't have such a card. If you come by Eurostar train through the tunnel from France, you can exit Pancras station and just walk to the hotel. Otherwise take one station via subway to Russell Square Station. That station is right behind the hotel block.

See you soon there!

PS: We hope COVID-19 is mostly done by April 2021. As Geoff Perlman, CEO of Xojo Inc., said in a recent hangout event, in case of cancellation that would be end of the year and everyone is refunded. So you can sign up and book flights early in January.

Version Tracking in FileMaker with help of MBS Plugin

We show you our Split DDR example to prepare your DDR for better tracking changes in version control systems like GIT.

The Split DDR example file is included with download of MBS FileMaker Plugin.

All our FileMaker videos   Watch on Youtube.


MBS FileMaker Plugin 10.4 - More than 6300 Functions In One Plugin

Nickenich, Germany - (September 15th, 2020) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce MBS FileMaker Plugin 10.4 for macOS, iOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin currently available for FileMaker Pro. As the leading database management solution for Windows, macOS, iOS and the web, the FileMaker Pro Integrated Development Environment supports a plugin architecture that can easily extend the feature set of the application. MBS FileMaker Plugin 10.4 has been updated and now includes over 6300 different functions, and the versatile plugin has gained more new functions:

The main feature of the newer plugin version is our move from Visual Studio 2008 to the more current version 2019. We now use universal runtime library, the same Visual Studio runtime as FileMaker. As Windows 10 includes those DLLs by default and Windows 7 and 8 can install them, the plugin should run fine there. We worked on this for over a year to get all our libraries ported and recompiled. All parts come together and we can finally ship our Windows plugins built with current tools and start to add more Windows 10 APIs over time.

You may know that FileMaker has a built-in Location function for iOS. MBS FileMaker Plugin include CoreLocation functions for macOS for years. For the new version we added WindowsLocation functions to query the location of your Windows PC. Useful for all those Windows tablet PCs running FileMaker Pro. Check also CoreLocation.requestLocation function for macOS to ask for location permissions.

For GraphicsMagick we have new functions to select a font family, stretch (condensed or expanded), style (italic or oblique) or weight (bold). Once set, you can use GMImage.Annotate to write text. We can list the font types available to a text file with GMImage.ListTypeInfo function.

Use Archive.ExtractFile to extract just one file from an archive and get it back as container value. For SSH connections use SSH.ConfigureKeepAlive to prevent the connection from timing out when an operation takes longer than 2 minutes. When tracing plugin calls on server use Trace.SetServerLogPath to have one log file per thread and not mix all calls from all scripts in one huge log file.

For CURL we added functions to query some of the options to help with debugging. You can query effective HTTP method and the retry after delay. We extended post fields to allow more than 8 MB in data size.

On macOS you can use ImageCapture.SetItemsAddedScript to trigger a script when a picture is taken with your digital camera. For TextView functions you can now set them to styled text with TextView.SetStyledText function or append styled text with TextView.AppendStyledText or query the current text with TextView.GetStyledText function.

For iOS use iOSApp.ReadReceipt function to read the app store receipt and see what items the user purchased with the store. Check the StoreKit functions to list products and start a transaction.

We optimized speed for Audit functions, add better error handling for socket functions, rewrote Hotkey functions to use native API on Windows, improved text encoding handling for XML and restored the notifications to show errors in MBS calls (if you have notifications allowed for FileMaker).

Finally we updated bzip2 library to version 1.0.8, CURL to 7.72.0, DynaPDF to 4.0.41.118 with ZUGFeRD 2.1, GraphicsMagick to 1.3.35, JPEG library to 9d, PCRE to 8.44, SQLAPI to 5.1.1, SQLite to 3.33.0 including decimal extension and we updated Xcode to version 10.6.

See release notes for a complete list of changes.

MonkeyBread Software Releases the MBS Xojo Plugins in version 20.4

Nickenich, Germany - (September 15th, 2020) -- MonkeyBread Software today is pleased to announce MBS Xojo Plugins 20.4 for macOS, Linux and Windows, the latest update to their product that is easily the most powerful plugin collection currently available for Xojo. MBS Xojo Plugins have been updated and now includes over 2600 classes and 70,000 documented features, and the versatile plugins have gained more new functions:

The main feature of the newer plugin version is our move from Visual Studio 2008 to the more current version 2019. We now use universal runtime library, the same Visual Studio runtime as Xojo. As Windows 10 includes those DLLs by default and Windows 7 and 8 can install them, the plugin should run fine there. We worked on this for over a year to get all our libraries ported and recompiled. All parts come together and now we can ship our Windows plugins built with current tools and start to add more Windows 10 APIs over time.

We add classes for Windows Store in our new WinFrameworks plugin. You can now offer trial applications with in-app purchases to unlock the full version. Our plugin allows you to query the products, the SKU list and the status of current licenses.

For Windows we added location classes, so you can query the location of the computer, similar to our CoreLocation classes on macOS. Great for apps running on Windows tablet PCs with a built-in GPS.

To connect to Claris FileMaker Server's Data and Admin API, we got a new FMAPI plugin. The plugin class FMDataMBS for Data API and FMAdminMBS class for the Admin API takes care about authentication and sending queries. The results are provided as JSON and parsed as variants, dictionaries and arrays. This greatly simplifies talking to FileMaker Servers from Xojo. For example build a Xojo app to run on your Raspberry Pi, collect data and push them to a FileMaker database.

If you use file dialogs in Xojo for macOS or Windows, you can now use our plugin classes to modify the dialogs. For this use NSSavePanelObserverMBS class on macOS or WinFileDialogObserverMBS class on Windows. You may use both to add custom controls to a save or open dialog.

For DynaPDF Plugin we decided to implement DynaPDFErrorExceptionMBS class. If you don't implement an Error event, we raise exceptions when an error happens. This should help beginners to not miss errors. And as you can load a custom DynaPDF library, we have a DynaPDFMissingFunctionExceptionMBS class to inform you that a function is not available. To make debugging easier, we added ActiveFontInfo property, which you can inspect in debugger to see what the current font is.

The HTMLViewer classes for WebKit 2 got more preferences in WKPreferencesMBS class to enable inspector via developer extras, disable image loading, printing backgrounds and set standard font size and family. For WKWebViewMBS we added properties to disable background drawing for transparent views.

Our MapKit support on macOS got improvements with new MKMarkerAnnotationViewMBS class to display marker annotations. The MKAnnotationViewMBS class has new prepareForReuse and prepareForDisplay events to better handle reuse of views and lower memory usage. We can query all annotation views via new annotationViews function in MKMapViewMBS class.

We improved JSONMBS class with new ArrayItems function, rewrote HotkeyMBS class for Windows to use native API, added cameraDeviceDidEnableAccessRestriction and cameraDeviceDidRemoveAccessRestriction events to ImageCaptureEventsMBS class to notify you about device unlocking, we added font style handling to GMImageMBS class, added new GetVariantAsDictionaryArrayMBS function to get a dictionary array stored inside a variant and we added support for WinDataObjectMBS class to receive email attachments from Outlook via Drag & Drop.

To speed up pre-compilation in Xojo for console projects, we changed over 300 classes to mark them console unsafe. This way those classes will be ignored for console targets. Please contact us if you need one of those classes in your web or console projects.

Finally we updated bzip2 library to version 1.0.8, CURL to 7.72.0, DynaPDF to 4.0.41.118 with ZUGFeRD 2.1, GraphicsMagick to 1.3.35, jpeg to 9d, jpeg-turbo to 2.0.5, pcre to 8.44, SQLAPI to 5.1.1, SQLite to 3.33.0 including decimal extension and updated to Xcode 10.6.

See release notes for a complete list of changes.

Neues MBS FileMaker Plugin 10.4

15. September 2020 - Monkeybread Software veröffentlicht heute das MBS FileMaker Plugin für FileMaker in Version 10.4, mit inzwischen über 6300 Funktionen eines der größten FileMaker Plugins überhaupt. Hier einige der Neuerungen:

Das wichtigste Feature der neueren Plugin-Version ist unser Umstieg von Visual Studio 2008 auf die aktuellere Version 2019. Wir verwenden jetzt die universelle Runtime-Bibliothek in der gleichen Version wie sie FileMaker verwendet. Da Windows 10 diese DLLs standardmäßig enthält und Windows 7 und 8 sie installieren können, sollte das Plugin dort problemlos laufen. Wir haben über ein Jahr lang daran gearbeitet alle unsere Bibliotheken zu portieren und neu zu kompilieren. Jetzt können wir unsere Windows-Plugins, die mit aktuellen Tools erstellt wurden, ausliefern und im Laufe der Zeit weitere Windows 10-APIs hinzufügen.

Sie wissen vielleicht, dass FileMaker eine eingebaute Standortfunktion für iOS hat. Das MBS-Plugin enthält seit Jahren CoreLocation-Funktionen für MacOS. Für die neue Version haben wir WindowsLocation-Funktionen hinzugefügt, um den Standort Ihres Windows-PCs abzufragen. Nützlich für alle Windows-Tablet-PCs mit FileMaker Pro. Für iOS probieren Sie die CoreLocation.requestLocation-Funktion, um die Standortberechtigungen abzufragen.

Für GraphicsMagick haben wir neue Funktionen zur Auswahl einer Schriftfamilie, der Größe, dem Stil (kursiv oder schräg) oder der Gewichtung (fett). Einmal festgelegt, können Sie GMImage.Annotate verwenden, um Text zu schreiben. Wir können die verfügbaren Schriftarten mit GMImage.ListTypeInfo als Liste in eine Textdatei schreiben.

Verwenden Sie Archive.ExtractFile, um nur eine Datei aus einem Archiv zu extrahieren und sie als Containerwert zu bekommen. Für SSH-Verbindungen verwenden Sie SSH.ConfigureKeepAlive, um zu verhindern, dass die Verbindung mit einem Timeout abbricht, wenn ein Vorgang länger als 2 Minuten dauert. Beim Trace von Plugin-Aufrufen auf dem Server verwenden Sie Trace.SetServerLogPath, um eine Protokolldatei pro Thread zu bekommen und nicht alle Aufrufe aller Skripte in einer riesigen Protokolldatei zu mischen.

Für CURL haben wir Funktionen zur Abfrage einiger Optionen hinzugefügt, um bei der Fehlersuche zu helfen. Sie können die effektive HTTP-Methode abfragen und die Verzögerung bis zum nächsten Verbindungsversuch. Wir haben die POST-Felder erweitert, um eine Datengröße von mehr als 8 MB zu ermöglichen.

Unter MacOS können Sie ImageCapture.SetItemsAddedScript verwenden, um ein Skript auszulösen, wenn ein Bild mit Ihrer Digitalkamera aufgenommen wird. Für TextView-Funktionen können Sie sie jetzt mit der Funktion TextView.SetStyledText auf formatierten Text setzen oder formatierten Text mit der Funktion TextView.AppendStyledText anhängen oder den aktuellen Text mit der Funktion TextView.GetStyledText abfragen.

Für iOS verwenden Sie die Funktion iOSApp.ReadReceipt, um die Quittung des App Store zu lesen und zu sehen, welche Artikel der Benutzer mit dem Store gekauft hat. Benutzen Sie die StoreKit-Funktionen, um Produkte aufzulisten und eine Transaktion zu starten.

Wir optimieren die Geschwindigkeit für Audit-Funktionen, fügen eine bessere Fehlerbehandlung für Socket-Funktionen hinzu, schreiben die Hotkey-Funktionen mit nativer API unter Windows neu, verbesseren die Handhabung der Textkodierung für XML Funktionen und stellen die Fehler Benachrichtigungen wieder her, um Fehler in MBS-Aufrufen anzuzeigen (wenn Sie Benachrichtigungen für FileMaker zugelassen haben).

Schließlich aktualisieren wir die bzip2-Bibliothek auf Version 1.0.8, CURL auf 7.72.0, DynaPDF auf 4.0.41.118 mit ZUGFeRD 2.1, GraphicsMagick auf 1.3.35, JPEG-Bibliothek auf 9d, PCRE auf 8.44, SQLAPI auf 5.1.1, SQLite auf 3.33.0 einschließlich Dezimalerweiterung und wir aktualisieren Xcode auf Version 10.6.

Alle Änderungen in den Release Notes.

Tip fo the day: Print to PDF for WebView

If you like to print a HTMLViewer in Xojo 2020r1 and you look for a replacement to PrintToPDFFileMBS function, you can use this code with NSPrintOperationMBS and WKWebViewMBS:

Dim browser As WKWebViewMBS = browser.WKWebView // your web viewer Dim pi As NSPrintInfoMBS = NSPrintInfoMBS.sharedPrintInfo Dim po As NSPrintOperationMBS = browser.printOperation(pi) Dim file As FolderItem = SpecialFolder.Desktop.Child("test.pdf") pi.SetSaveDestination(file) pi.horizontalPagination = pi.NSAutoPagination pi.verticalPagination = pi.NSAutoPagination po.showsPrintPanel = False po.showsProgressPanel = True po.runOperationModalForWindow(Self)

This prints to a file as destination and asks for auto pagination of the pages. We disable print panel, but show a progress panel.


Two weeks with Xojo 2020r1

About two weeks ago Xojo Inc. released their Xojo update. It got a lot of attention for the Web 2.0 feature. Between all the complains about r1 coming end of August and Web 2.0 not being finished to what people expected, there are a few good things for desktop developers, but first the Web target:

Over the years I heard a lot of speeches about managing expectations. And I wished Xojo Inc. would have managed expectations better and called the current shipping Web 2.0 support a developer preview. And of course had a spring release with bug fixes and a few features earlier in 2020. For us all web development stays with Xojo 2019 and will move to Web 2.0 probably next year in spring when a few more releases add the urgently needed functionality. Xojo Inc. already announced they will do additions like an improved WebCanvas and some more events for mouse & keyboard. We'll see what will ship later this year.

For desktop there are important fixes and changes and you don't want to miss those. Moving to WebKit 2 for HTMLViewer with new JavaScript integration is a big move. Our plugin adds more via WKWebViewMBS class. More important may be the framework bugs in that release. And if you ignore API 2 and all the deprecation warnings, you may enjoy the speed improvements in the IDE and use the new release happy to write your desktop apps.

Tip: When you start a new project, create it in Xojo 2019 and then open it in 2020r1. If the project has 2019 in the header as creation version, then auto complete will show API 1 methods and you can enjoy using msgbox and other familiar commands.

As plugin developer the release has brought developers to update their licenses. There is a notable surge in sales for updates and even new licenses for our Xojo plugins! We welcome the new developers in the Xojo world. Great to see people moving from older versions to the current to try the new features.

As Apple switches to Apple Silicon, their own ARM CPUs, we expect Xojo to soon support that with a new checkbox in the compiler options. And then more developers may want to renew theirs licenses with Xojo to move to a newer Xojo version and support their clients for the new platform. Our plugins already are compiled for Apple Silicon here and Xojo can be the tool to port your app with the click of a checkbox to add universal support. And much later, Xojo may still support Intel as target once Xcode will no longer do that in a few years.

We build all plugins for Linux ARM 64-bit here and would love to see such a target added to Xojo. But that may not be high on the priority list. By making sure things build with multiple compilers (llvm, gcc and Visual Studio), we keep finding bugs as different compilers have warnings for different problems.

Please try 2020r1 for desktop/console projects, play with Web 2.0 and report any issue you see. For Web projects stay with Xojo 2019 in production and move to Web 2 later when a future Xojo release adds missing items. For desktop projects, you may check what changes may be needed going from older to current version, maybe use a few #if XojoVersion >= 2020 then in the code to use newer API where needed.

FileMaker Magazin - MBS Artikel

Wir haben die Artikel zum MBS Plugin aus dem FileMaker Magazin gesammelt hier online gestellt: FileMaker Magazin Artikel.

Mehr Artikel gibts im FMM Premium Abo mit Beispiel Downloads, FMM Wissensdatenbank & Zugriff auf alle Ausgaben seit 1994!

Das FileMaker Magazin ist eine exzellente Quelle von Informationen, Anleitungen und Profitips.


MBS Xojo Examples Projects stay with Xojo 2019

The examples shipping with MBS Xojo Plugins are currently made with Xojo 2019. We tried to update a few for Xojo 2020r1, especially web projects. But the current Web 2 framework in the Xojo application is not complete yet from our perspective. More like a developer preview, where you take a sneak peal and wait for a future 2020r2 release to include more functionality.

For several examples we miss mouse related events. The WebImageView for example has a Pressed event for example. But misses to tell us where it was pressed, so the ChartDirector examples won't fly.

The missing MsgBox name is annoying as that name is deep in my muscle memory. It can still be replaced with MessageBox instead.

Some projects use WebTimer, which doesn't load properly and show internal trouble. You know when the compiler can't tell you what's wrong and just points to the control name on the layout.

The renamed methods for the API 2 can be adapted, but are very annoying. Why not keep old names with deprecation warnings or just hidden from auto complete.

Finally projects saved with Web 2 in Xojo 2020r1 may not load in older Xojo versions.

So for the rest of this year, we expect our examples to stay with Xojo 2019r1.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 20.4pr9

New in this prerelease of the 20.4 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 10.4pr9

New in this prerelease of version 10.4 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

14 years since MBS FileMaker Plugin version 1.0

Today fourteen years ago we released the MBS FileMaker Plugin in Version 1.0.
Here the original announcement:

[ANN] MBS Plug-in For Filemaker

Make FileMaker Windows Semi Transparent!
Take Screenshots from FileMaker
Run an Applescript on field exit
and more...

Monkey Bread Software, maker of the popular MBS Plug-in for RealBasic and geist interactive have teamed up to bring the extensive MBS function library to FileMaker. The MBS RealBasic plug-in contains over 10000 functions, and this release represents the first step in a project to bring as many of those functions to FileMaker as make sense. Many many more features to com in the future.

The plug-in is available for FileMaker 8 and 8.5. It is available for Windows XP and as Universal Binary for Mac OS X There is a Developer Tool available to help you get started quickly with documentation and Calculation builder. Demos are available on the website

more info: geistinteractive.com
download: monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/

Read also: 4000 functions in 10 years and 5000 Functions in MBS Plugin.

Thanks for the support over years.

FileMaker Stammtisch in Wien am 10. September 2020

On my next visit to Vienna, we plan another developer meeting:

Wer hat Interesse an einem FileMaker Entwicklertreffen am 10. September in Wien?

Diesmal mit Vince Menanno von Beezwax, der gerne was zum Inspector Pro zeigt.
Vince ist seit ein paar Monaten in Deutschland und kommt gerne mal rüber nach Wien.
Und gerne zeige ich auch was zum nächsten MBS Plugin.

Einfach in gemütlicher Runde treffen in einem netten Restaurant und beim Abendessen was über FileMaker reden. Vielleicht habt ihr ja auch Fragen und Probleme, wo ich helfen kann?

Zeit wäre ca. 18 bis 22 Uhr am 10. September 2020, so dass man auch später kommen oder früher gehen kann.

Wer dabei sein möchte, bitte bei uns melden.

Falls sonst noch Bedarf an Schulung, vor Ort Entwicklung oder FileMaker/Xojo Hilfe besteht, bitte wegen Terminfindung bald melden.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 20.4pr8

New in this prerelease of the 20.4 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 10.4pr8

New in this prerelease of version 10.4 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Webservice vs. Plugin

Sometimes users ask what is better: a plugin or a web service?

The usual answer from your lawyer applies here, too: It depends.

If you can write your own plugin or web service, things may be different than the average user, who uses it.

The web service

The web service provides functionality over a network (usual Internet). It runs on someone else's computer who takes care about keeping it working with redundancy, load balancing and security threads. Your access to the service depends on the quality of your own network connection and the service is usually not available while being offline or without connectivity on the go in rural areas.

You may need to prepare for service being not available and have a table in your database for jobs, so when service is not available, you can store requests and process them later.

If the service gets new features, those are usually rolled out quickly. Usually first to a tester group, but over time to all users. A good service will not break functionality, but use versioning in the URLs to keep old versions running.

Your access to the service will be available as long as you pay whatever the service vendor wants to charge you. Per request, per time and with arbitrary usage limits. The service may stop being available for you if your credit card expires and you forget to update it. If the company goes out of business or decides the service is not profitable, the service may shut down with very short notice.

One question is who owns the data. Can the service provider use data you provide and for example use it for advertisement. Servers may be in a different jurisdiction and could be seized. Problematic if you use shared servers and some other customers does something illegal and your data is seized with the one of the suspect.

Finally you need to consider how big the impact is on you, in case the provider is hacked and all your data on the server is copied by the hackers. Or worse, if the hackers can read all data coming back over months. Of course you may have a contract stating how data is processed, stored, secured, backed up and shared.

The library

The library (or plugin) providing a service locally within your solution is a bit different. You get the library and you can use it locally, even offline. There is usually no per-use fee, but only a license fee to get the library once, with possible yearly maintenance cost.

A shared library has access to the hosting application, so it can work with windows and controls. It can show own dialogs within the application and provide additional functionality on the host windows.

If the vendor of the library goes out of business, the library will usually continue to work. Over time some functionality may break, e.g. with an update to the operation system. If that happens, you may look for other libraries to provide such functionality and gradually replace features as needed.

Every request can be answered by the library instantly or after some processing time. The network latency has no effect. All data can be accessed within the same memory and same disk space as no data needs to be uploaded. Performance may be higher compared to a service, as the library is usually provided as compiled code for the local CPU. And of course all data stays locally.

Finally the library may help you to access a web service. We have examples for e.g. sending emails, Amazon S3 upload/download and more for MBS Plugins.

Conclusion

What you prefer to use depends on your concrete task to solve. Think a little bit about all those factors above and decide wisely. If you have a library doing the job or you already pay for the service, you may just use that. Otherwise it is a calculation of make vs buy, pay by month for a service vs. pay one time for a license and how much work the implementation and future maintenance is.

Record Creation Script Trigger

Today we want to share two ways to trigger scripts via MBS Plugin on record creation.

There has been a request to have 

 

Auto Enter Script Trigger

 

First you can define a field TriggerScriptOnCreate with an auto calculation like this:

 

MBS("FM.RunScript"; "Contacts"; "RecordCreated"; Get(RecordID))

 

We set the option to not replace existing values. This calculation now runs on every record creation in FileMaker Pro. The plugin function returns OK, which is written to the record.

The script will now run whenever you create a new record or duplicate one as the calculation runs. We pass the record ID so the script could check the record.

 

Timer Script Trigger

 

Other people may create records on the same database hosted on a server. So you may want to regularly check whether there are new records and we just automated it via counting records via SQL to trigger a script when the count changes. Here is the sample script:

 

# StartRecordCreatedTrigger

 

Set Variable [ $count ; Value: MBS( "FM.ExecuteFileSQL"; "Contacts"; "SELECT Count(*) FROM Contacts"; 9; 13 ) ] 

If [ MBS("IsError") ] 

Show Custom Dialog [ "SQL Error?" ; $$LastSQLCount ] 

Else

Set Variable [ $$LastSQLCount ; Value: $count ] 

# free old if still runs

Set Variable [ $r ; Value: If(Length($$RecordCreatedScheduleRef) > 0 ; MBS("Schedule.Release"; $$RecordCreatedScheduleRef); "") ] 

# launch new evaluate schedule

Set Variable [ $$RecordCreatedScheduleRef ; Value: MBS( "Schedule.EvaluateAfterDelay"; 60; "Let( [ $SQLCount = MBS( \"FM.ExecuteFileSQL\"; \"Contacts\"; \"SELECT Count(*) FROM Contacts\"; 9; 13 ); $e = MBS(\"IsError\"); $r = Wenn($SQLCount ≠ $$LastSQLCount; MBS(\"FM.RunScript\"; \"Contacts\"; \"RecordCr… ] 

End If

 

As you see we query an initial count number and put it in a global variable. We schedule an evaluate and let's take a look on the expression without the backslashes needed:

 

Let( [

$SQLCount = MBS( "FM.ExecuteFileSQL"; "Contacts"; "SELECT Count(*) FROM Contacts"; 9; 13 );

$e = MBS("IsError");

$r = Wenn($e = 0 AND $SQLCount $$LastSQLCount; MBS("FM.RunScript"; "Contacts"; "RecordCreated"));

$$LastSQLCount = Wenn($e; $$LastSQLCount; $SQLCount)

]; "")

 

As you see we query again the count of records via SQL and if that number changes, trigger the script and remember the new count. If an error is reported from SQL, we ignore this for now as the file may be closed currently?

 

To stop this later, we can release the schedule and have the plugin stop it:

 

# StopRecordCreatedTrigger

 

# free old if still runs

Set Variable [ $r ; Value: If(Length($$RecordCreatedScheduleRef) > 0 ; MBS("Schedule.Release"; $$RecordCreatedScheduleRef); "") ] 

Set Variable [ $$RecordCreatedScheduleRef ; Value: "" ] 

 

As you see we just call Schedule.Release function to release if the variable is set and then clear it.

By using the MBS Plugin to schedule this, we can do the Evaluate even while a script is running already. Your scripts can use OnTimer if needed as we don't need that.

 

Let us know if you have comments or questions.


DynaPDF vs. PDFDocument in Xojo

The DynaPDF plugin exists now for 13 years. DynaPDF itself is older and has been developed long before it's public release 17 years ago. It covers nearly all PDF features in an extensive library and you can use it in your Xojo applications!

As Xojo 2020r1 brought a brand new PDFDocument class, we got questions on how they compare.

The new PDFDocument class allows you to create a PDF in Xojo, draw with the graphics class into it and then save the file. You can use various fonts, draw vector graphics and text on the pages.

With the possibility to record drawing into a JSON block, this class provides an interesting new way to prepare PDF content as template and draw it later. This allows to serialize the drawing commands and reuse them several times. DynaPDF on the other side allows to use real PDF templates, which means you can draw PDF content in a template and then place it on several pages and still have it only once in the file.

Some things you may notice with PDFDocument are, that the class currently does only ANSI encoding and is not fully unicode capable. Fonts are embedded as a whole file, which makes PDF files bigger. Pictures are always RGB and stored as JPEG. Similar to DynaPDF the PDFDocument class may notice if the same picture is used on multiple pages and only store it one time in the file. There is no direct way to draw styled text. (see blog post about Styled Text in DynaPDF). Currently the graphics class integration for DynaPDF allows to draw 2D objects (see Object2D class) and we expect this to be added to the PDFDocument class in a future update.

Here is the DynaPDF feature table with an added column for the new PDFDocument class:


(more)

xDev 18.5 Issue

The September/October (18.5) issue of xDev Magazine is now available. Here's a quick preview of what's inside:

Introducing PowerXS (Part 2) by Marc Zeedar
After introducing PowerXS in the previous issue, this time Marc goes into more technical detail about how his new framework cloning tool for XojoScripts actually works and how you can expand the class to support more classes.

OOP Listbox (Part 3) by Markus Winter
Markus continues creating his object-oriented Listbox. This time he adds an interface to the control that lets it draw itself, a key component of OOP design.

Making Charts With Xojo by Stefanie Juchmes
You might have heard of Monkeybread Software's ChartDirector plugin, but did you know how versatile it is and how easy it is to use? In this article, Stefanie demonstrates many of the features of ChartDirector.

MapKit (Part 6) by Markus Winter
As Markus continues his quest to use Apple's MapKit in Xojo, he now explores adding annotations to map locations.

PLUS: Working with Sets, Xojo 2020 Release 1, Best of the Web, and more!

ChartDirector 7 preview

The next version of ChartDirector, version 7, will come in spring to summer 2021.

Below please find some images showing the new chart types and features in ChartDirector. It includes:

  • Treemap charts
  • Discrete heat maps
  • Circular bar meters/guages
  • New surface chart features
    • 4D charts
    • Surface projections
    • Custom surface lines, zones and images
    • Surface Chart Tooltips
  • Contour cross section and tooltips. It also demostrates coloring an XYChart (the cross section charts) using a contour layer color axis.
  • Multi-color line chart
There are some ChartDirector version 7 features cannot be easily demonstrated using static images, so we have not prepared images for them. They include:
  • Scalable bitmap output (useful for High DPI support, and high resolution printing usage)
  • Multi-Page PDF output (allows user to generate simple PDF reports without a separate PDF library)
  • Big Data support - charts with 100M points updated in realtime, with zooming/scrolling and track cursors
  • CDML support in tooltips. This allows tooltips with icons, complex text formatting, semi-transparent background, etc..

The final list of features in the release will be announced when the version 7 is finished. But as all those screenshots are made from the development version, we are confident, they will be included in the final product. You have a few days left to get a license with OmegaBundle or directly from us.

(more)

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 10.4pr7

New in this prerelease of version 10.4 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin: Download at monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

MBS Xojo Plugins, version 20.4pr7

New in this prerelease of the 20.4 plugins: Download: monkeybreadsoftware.com/xojo/download/plugin/Prerelease/.
Or ask us to be added to our shared Dropbox folder.

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