Door 2 - Install the MBS FileMaker Plugin

Welcome to the second door. Today we want to install the MBS plugin together, which we need for the other doors. Even if you do not have a license for our plugin yet, you can simply download it for testing.
Click here to go to the website and download it.

Here we have the choice between two archives. On the one hand a dmg archive for Mac and iOS users and a zip archive for Windows and Linux users. However, both archives have the same content. So click on the archive that suits you and download it.

Let's take a look at the downloaded archive. We have a folder for each operating system. Then a folder Extras ( this is not of interest to us in this advent calendar) and a folder Examples. In the Examples folder you will find FileMaker databases in which the various functionalities of the MBS plugin are shown. This examples folder has grown over many years and contains over 600 different examples that you can study.

The folders with the names of the individual operating systems are important for the installation of the plugin. If we open such a folder, we can see that the plugin file is in there. If we open the folder for Windows, there are even two files inside.

One file is intended for 32 bit systems and the other for 64 bit systems. If you are unsure which system you are using, copy both files and the plugin will automatically fetch the one it needs.

To install, open FileMaker and look for the Preference... dialog. Under Windows you will find it under Edit > Preferences... and on Mac under FileMaker Pro > Settings... now go to the Plugins tab and open the plugin folder by clicking on the appropriate button.

We then place the file(s) matching the operating system in this folder. Now we just have to close FileMaker completely once (e.g. via Command-Q on macOS). Now you can open FileMaker again and the plugin is ready for use.

To see if we can really use it now, we create a new script in the FileMaker script area. We want to display the current plugin version in a dialog box. First of all, we create a variable in which we store the version. We set the value of the variable with a plugin function. Each plugin function call is started with an MBS, followed by the function name and possibly parameters in brackets. In our case, the function name is version and we have no other parameters. This sets our value and we can output the information in a dialog.

Set Variable [ $version ; Value: MBS("Version") ]
Show Custom Dialog [ "MBS Plugin Version" ; $Version ]

The plugin is running Congratulations!

If you are a Mac user, you may have already noticed one of the free goodies from the MBS plugin. Because when you enter the letters of the function name, possible names that have the same beginning as our input are displayed. This is the auto-completion for MBS function names. There are more of these cool goodies that we try to support developers with. Have a look at the goodies on our website. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, we can only offer the vast majority of developer goodies for Mac. But we are trying to do what we can to extend the range for Windows as well.

If you have any questions about installing the plugin, please take a look at our installation videos.
MBS Plugin Installation on Windows
MBS Plugin Installation on macOS

Now everything is prepared so that we can start expanding our database with cool features tomorrow.

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