Comparing Base Elements Plugin to MBS FileMaker Plugin
At the conferences there was the question about how MBS FileMaker Plugin compares to the Base Elements plugin. Normally I don’t spend time checking other plugins as I just develop new features based on what people ask and not what other plugins may do.But well, I got a list of the Base Elements plugin functions and checked which MBS function call may help to do the same things. It’s not always an exact match and in general MBS functions do smaller steps, so you need to combine severals of them. That is different to other plugins which have complicated functions with a lot of options to do various tasks with one function.
| Base Element | MBS |
|---|---|
| BE_AlternateButton | Dialog.GetLastResult |
| BE_ApplyXSLT | - |
| BE_ApplyXSLTInMemory | - |
| BE_ArrayGetSize | QuickList.Count |
| BE_ArrayGetValue | QuickList.GetValue |
| BE_ArraySetFromValueList | QuickList.New |
| BE_Base64_Decode | Text.DecodeFromBase64 |
| BE_Base64_Encode | Text.EncodeToBase64 |
| BE_Base64_URL_Decode | Text.DecodeFromBase64URL |
| BE_Base64_URL_Encode | Text.EncodeToBase64URL |
| BE_CancelButton | Dialog.GetLastResult |
| BE_ClipboardFormats | Clipboard.GetTypes |
| BE_ClipboardText | Clipboard.GetText |
| BE_ContainerCompress | Container.Compress |
| BE_ContainerIsCompressed | Container.IsCompressed |
| BE_ContainerUncompress | Container.Decompress |
| BE_ConvertContainer | Container.RenameStream |
| BE_CopyFile | Files.CopyFile |
| BE_CreateFolder | Files.CreateDirectory |
| BE_Curl_Set_Option | Various CURL functions |
| BE_Curl_Trace | CURL.GetDebugAsText |
| BE_CurrentTimeMilliseconds | SystemInfo.Time |
| BE_Decrypt_AES | Encryption.Cipher |
| BE_DeleteFile | Files.Delete |
| BE_DisplayDialog | Dialog functions |
| BE_Encrypt_AES | Encryption.Cipher |
| BE_EvaluateJavaScript | JavaScript functions |
| BE_ExecuteScript | FM.RunScript |
| BE_ExecuteShellCommand | RunTask commands |
| BE_ExecuteSystemCommand | RunTask commands |
| BE_ExportFieldContents | Container.WriteFile |
| BE_File_Modification_Timestamp | Files.ModificationDate |
| BE_FileExists | Files.FileExists, Files.DirectoryExists and Files.ItemExists |
| BE_FileMaker_Fields | FM.QueryFieldsForTableName |
| BE_FileMaker_Tables | FM.QueryTableNames or FM.QueryBaseTableNames |
| BE_FileMakerSQL | FM.ExecuteFileSQL |
| BE_FileSize | Files.FileSize |
| BE_FileType_All | FileDialog.SelectItemDialog |
| BE_FileType_File | FileDialog.OpenFileDialog |
| BE_FileType_Folder | FileDialog.SelectFolderDialog |
| BE_FTP_Delete | See example at CURL.SetOptionQuote |
| BE_FTP_Upload | CURL Functions |
| BE_GetLastDDLError | FM.ExecuteSQL.LastErrorMessage |
| BE_GetLastError | IsError and FM.ExecuteSQL.LastError |
| BE_GetPreference | Preferences.GetValue |
| BE_Gzip | GZipFile.Compress |
| BE_HMAC | Hash.MD5.HMAC, Hash.PBKDF2.HMAC, Hash.SHA1.HMAC, Hash.SHA256.HMAC or Hash.SHA512.HMAC |
| BE_HTTP_DELETE | Various CURL Functions including CURL.SetOptionCustomRequest for delete |
| BE_HTTP_GET | Various CURL Functions |
| BE_HTTP_GET_File | Various CURL Functions including CURL.CreateOutputFile |
| BE_HTTP_PATCH | Various CURL Functions including CURL.SetOptionCustomRequest and CURL.SetInputText |
| BE_HTTP_POST | Various CURL Functions including CURL.SetOptionPost and CURL.SetOptionPostFields |
| BE_HTTP_PUT_DATA | Various CURL Functions including CURL.SetOptionPut and CURL.SetInputText |
| BE_HTTP_PUT_FILE | Various CURL Functions including CURL.SetOptionPut and CURL.OpenInputFile |
| BE_HTTP_Response_Code | CURL.GetResponseCode |
| BE_HTTP_Response_Headers | CURL.GetHeaderAsText |
| BE_HTTP_Set_Custom_Header | CURL.SetOptionHTTPHeader |
| BE_HTTP_Set_Proxy | CURL.SetOptionProxy, CURL.SetOptionProxyPort, CURL.SetOptionProxyUsername and CURL.SetOptionProxyPassword. |
| BE_ImportFile | Container.ReadFile |
| BE_JPEG_Recompress | GMImage.NewFromContainer, GMImage.SetQuality and GMImage.WriteToJPEGContainer |
| BE_JSON_ArraySize | JSON.GetArraySize |
| BE_JSON_Encode | JSON.CreateString |
| BE_JSON_Error_Description | JSON functions return those errors directly |
| BE_JSONPath | JSON.GetPathItem |
| BE_ListFilesInFolder | Files.List and Files.ListRecursive |
| BE_MessageDigest | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_MD5 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_MDC2 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA1 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA224 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA256 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA384 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestAlgorithm_SHA512 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestType_MD5 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MessageDigestType_SHA256 | Hash.Digest |
| BE_MoveFile | Files.MoveFile |
| BE_OKButton | Dialog.GetLastResult |
| BE_OpenFile | Files.Launch and Files.LaunchFile |
| BE_OpenURL | ShowURL |
| BE_Pause | Time.Sleep |
| BE_ProgressDialog | ProgressDialog functions |
| BE_ProgressDialog_Update | ProgressDialog.SetProgress, ProgressDialog.SetTopText and ProgressDialog.SetBottomText. |
| BE_ReadTextFromFile | Text.ReadTextFile |
| BE_RegularExpression | RegEx functions, e.g. RegEx.Replace |
| BE_SaveFileDialog | FileDialog.SaveFileDialog |
| BE_SaveURLToFile | CURL functions with CURL.CreateOutputFile for streaming data to file. |
| BE_SelectFile | FileDialog.OpenFileDialog |
| BE_SelectFolder | FileDialog.SelectFolderDialog |
| BE_SetClipboardText | Clipboard.SetText |
| BE_SetPreference | Preferences.SetValue |
| BE_SetTextEncoding | Passed as parameter to each function |
| BE_SMTP_AddAttachment | SendMail.AddAttachmentContainer |
| BE_SMTP_Send | SendMail functions |
| BE_SMTP_Server | SendMail.SetSMTPServer, SendMail.SetSMTPUserName and SendMail.SetSMTPPassword. |
| BE_TimeZoneOffset | - |
| BE_Values_TimesDuplicated | - |
| BE_UnGzip | GZipFile.Decompress |
| BE_Unzip | UnZipFile.OpenFile and UnZipFile.ExtractFiles |
| BE_UTCMilliseconds | - |
| BE_Values_ContainsDuplicates | QuickList.HasDuplicateItems |
| BE_Values_FilterOut | Find matches with QuickList.MatchesSubString and use QuickList.FindUnequals to remove them from list. |
| BE_Values_Unique | QuickList.RemoveDuplicateItems |
| BE_Values_Sort | QuickList.Sort |
| BE_Values_Trim | QuickList.Trim |
| BE_Vector_DotProduct | List.CrossProduct |
| BE_Vector_EuclideanDistance | Simply calculate it in FileMaker directly. |
| BE_Version | Version |
| BE_VersionAutoUpdate | VersionAutoUpdate |
| BE_WriteTextToFile | Text.WriteTextFile |
| BE_Xero_SetTokens | Get token and use CURL.SetOptionHTTPHeader |
| BE_XML_Parse | XML.Parse |
| BE_XPath | XML.Query |
| BE_XPathAll | XML.Query |
| BE_Zip | ZipFile.CompressFiles |
If needed, we could of course add the five missing ones.
