Next year in April our company will turn 25 years old.
We'll plan to have a big party here in Germany near our office with over 100 guests.
Invitations are going out this month in several batches.
If you like to join and you miss an invitation, you can contact us and ask whether your invitation got lost.
As people confirm they are coming, we'll add them to the guest list. If we run out of space, we may put people on the wait list.
If you can't make it, please respond soon, so we don't need to contact you again later.
Debugging can be one of the most challenging aspects of software development, especially in complex environments like FileMaker. Thankfully, the MBS FileMaker Plugin offers a range of features that make this process more manageable and efficient. Here are six ways the MBS Plugin can transform your debugging experience on macOS.
1. Tooltips for Easy Value Inspection
The MBS Plugin enhances the debugger by displaying tooltips that show the contents of variables and fields. When you hover over a variable, a tooltip appears, providing instant access to its value without the need to run additional scripts or create temporary fields for debugging purposes. This real-time inspection allows you to understand how data flows through your scripts, enabling quicker problem identification. Additionally, the context menu allows you to copy these values directly to your clipboard. This means you can easily reference or share them without interrupting your workflow.
see also Tooltips for Script Debugger
(more)
New in this prerelease of version 14.5 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/
You can subscribe to our FileMaker mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
Something sad happened the last months and brought me lots of sleepless nights. A part of my business broke away, but let's talk a few details:
We have been using the Share-it aka MyCommerce service from Digital River GmbH to sell plugin licenses since 2006. It was working flawlessly for many years until August 2024. They sold our licenses in their web shop, issues invoices, collected any VAT or sales tax, report sales and paid us usually on 15th of the month. But since August they didn't pay us for sales.
On 20th August 2024 they announced to switch to report after 30 days and pay out another 30 days later, so effectively 60 day payout. Also they introduced a platform fee and customer support went to a $185/h rate. They put these changes into a new contract to go into effect in October 16th.
(more)
New in this prerelease of version 14.5 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/
You can subscribe to our FileMaker mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
As developers, we’re always on the lookout for ways to enhance our efficiency and streamline our workflows. The MBS FileMaker Plugin has been a valuable ally in this regard, consistently delivering features that make development easier and more intuitive. Today, we’re thrilled to announce an exciting new addition in version 14.5: auto-complete functionality for custom functions!
What’s New?
Building on last year’s introduction of auto-complete for variables in the Script Workspace, we’re now expanding this time-saving feature to the custom function dialog. This enhancement allows you to effortlessly type and receive automatic suggestions for identifiers, making the creation of custom functions smoother than ever before.
How It Works
One of the most significant improvements in this update is the way auto-complete is triggered. Previously, you had to manually press F5 or fn-F5 to invoke the auto-complete for variables within the dialog. In version 14.5, the plugin automatically checks for possible completions with every key press. This means you can type your function name, and the plugin will instantly offer suggestions based on what you've entered, streamlining your development process.
For example, if you begin typing “Get(,” the plugin will immediately present a dropdown list of matching functions. This instant feedback helps you quickly narrow down your choices, allowing you to select the correct function without the hassle of navigating through extensive lists or trying to remember the exact syntax.
But it doesn't stop there! If you have the Script Workspace open, the plugin can also scan your existing scripts for variable names, presenting them as suggestions in the custom function dialog. This includes global variables that the plugin has recognized earlier, providing you with a comprehensive set of options to choose from. This context-sensitive auto-complete significantly reduces the cognitive load on developers, making it easier to build and manage complex formulas.
(more)
For the next plugin version we add the Vision.RectifyDocument function for macOS and iOS to detect a document in a picture and rectify this. This is used internally for DocumentCameraScan function on iOS, but now can be used independently.
MBS( "Vision.RectifyDocument"; Image { ; ImageType; FileName } )
To give you an example. You may have the picture on the left and use the function to get the picture on the right side.
(more)
New in this prerelease of version 14.5 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/
You can subscribe to our FileMaker mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
From time to time we get asked to provide an example for ChatGPT. Since this is just another web service, we can just handle it with the CURL functions in MBS Plugin. But since we don’t like to block the user interface while ChatGPT processes the request, we use our CURL.PerformInBackground function to run it in the background. Later when finished, it triggers a second script to process the result.
The request is build with a call to JSONSetElement here passing the various fields. We include a system message with the request, e.g. “Please translate text to English.” and then pass the text to translate in the user role. This way the user should not be able to provide instructions to the LLM in their text.
(more)
We talked about various things at the FileMaker conference in Rome and security is a concern for everyone. Especially as scripted attacks got frequently.
Rename Admin
Have you ever put a FileMaker Server on the internet? You may note that people knowing your address try to connect with various account names and passwords. You may want to rename the Admin user everywhere to another name. Since there is a chance someone may try the Admin account and FileMaker locks accounts for 5 minutes if you have 5 incorrect passwords for login within 5 minutes, you may run into the Admin account be blocked. Just use a different name to avoid this.
(more)
When receiving invoices in electronic formats, you have several tasks to implement:
Receiving invoice via email.
You may use our CURL functions to regularly download emails from your IMAP postbox and use our EmailParser functions to get the attachments. That may include the ZUGFeRD PDF invoice file. Or a pure XML file with invoice data.
Extract XML for invoice from PDF
Use DynaPDF functions (Lite license or higher) to extract XML from a PDF file using functions for embedded files.
We have sample projects for this included with the plugin download.
Validate the XML to match the schema using the ZUGFeRD XSD files
Make sure the XML is syntactically okay, doesn’t produce a parse error or a schema error.
Below we show how to do this with MBS FileMaker Plugin in FileMaker.
Validate whether the content of the invoice is validate for the business rules
There is a file included with ZUGFeRD download with the rules (.sch file). For example this specifies that the VAT ID starts with the country code, which is not part of the schema in step 3. Implementing this in FileMaker can be a lot of work, but at least you can use our XML.Query function to help.
Read values from XML.
Several people coded the import and the script depends on your field schema in FileMaker. Check our example file and maybe use it as a start. Our XML functions can help and you may read a lot of files simply with a call to XML.GetPathValue.
(more)
Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch.
A few days ago Christian Schmitz from Monkeybread Software joined a live episode to talk a bit about the MBS FileMaker Plugin. Watch it on YouTube.
We check what is new in 14.4 release: Announcements, new functions and Release Notes.
(more)
Back from the conference in Liechtenstein, I wrote down a few of the tidbits we learnt.
Missing serial numbers
If you use serial numbers for new records in FileMaker, you may notice that sometimes the serial numbers have a gap. Why could this happen?
- Someone deleted a record
- Someone created a record, but never committed it.
- FileMaker crashed or network got disconnected while a transaction runs, so it never completes.
You need to know that on record creation, the client will request a new serial number from the server. If the record doesn't get committed or gets reverted, the serial value is used, but no record saved. If you like to make sure the serial number doesn't get lost, please call Commit script step after creating the new record to make sure the empty record is definitely stored.
Please consider moving to UUID numbers instead, so people can't get the serial numbers and they are more random but unique.
(more)
New in this prerelease of version 14.5 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
- Added field comment to the tooltips for the export dialog.
- Fixed an issue in Window.PositionNextDialog function for Windows.
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.94.265.
- Added DynaPDF.GetAnnotColor and DynaPDF.GetTextBBox functions.
- Fixed an edge case with swiss keyboard layout for RemoteControl.PressKey function and the virtual key lookup.
- Added sample script into extras to launch two FileMaker on macOS, one with HTTP tunneling on and one with it being off.
- Optimized XML functions to better handle thread locking.
- Improved error handling for XML.ApplyStylesheet.
- Added some auto complete for custom functions for parameters and function names:
- Table occurrences
- Field names after ::
- Operator names
- Function names from function list
- Parameter names
- Get/Hole/Obtenir functions
Invoke with fn-F5 in the dialog or we auto invoke it for you.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/
You can subscribe to our FileMaker mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
Recently someone asked about comments for a table and whether we could do something there. In the FileMaker community you find a couple of ideas around this topic, so we through why not. Let us add a comment text for the table definition section of the manage database dialog.
But we run into a couple of questions like where to store comments. Should the plugin store them somewhere or should FileMaker store them. Would we have some kind of user interface to enter the comment?
We can't just store comments in a local preferences file since others would open the database file and miss the comments. We can't store them in a new separate table as that would not survive clone and migration process. We decided to leverage the existing field comments in FileMaker to define a new field _TableComment to store it. Just define a field (can be global) and add a comment there. FileMaker stores the comment and provides the user interface to enter it.
(more)
New in this prerelease of version 14.5 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
- Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.93.262.
- Updated CURL to version 8.10.1.
- Fixed crash with running Python on Windows.
- Added DynaPDF.GetAnnotTextAlign function.
- Added DynaPDF.ClearLicense function.
- Added JSON.InsertRecords function to insert array of records in JSON.
- Updated to libxml2 version 2.13.4.
- Updated to libxslt version 1.1.42.
- Updated LibXL to version 4.4.0.
- Updated OpenSSL to version 3.3.2.
- Note: SSLv3 is disabled now.
- Updated libarchive to version 3.7.6.
- Changed Archive.Content to skip GID, UID, Permissions, RDev, FileType and HardLink fields, if not set.
- Updated zxing library to newer branch.
- Improved Barcode.Detect by using newer zxing library.
- Added Barcode.DetectAsJSON function.
- Updated to Xcode 16.0.
- Updated jpeg library to version 9.6.
- Fixed CURL Multi functions, broken in 14.4.
- Added a field to database design dialog for tables to show comments. To add a comment, define a field _TableComment and put comment text there.
- Fixed an issue with GMImage.WriteToPDFContainer and Twain.Acquire on Windows.
- Added Text.FilterSwissQRCode function.
- Added DynaPDF.GetGlyphIndex and DynaPDF.GetGlyphOutline functions.
- Updated discount library to version 2.2.7d.
- Added Audit.BuildCaches function.
- Updated unicode tables for removing accents for Text.RemoveAccents function.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/
You can subscribe to our FileMaker mailing list to get notified for new pre-release and release versions.
