For our German speaking clients we have a workshop day:
In Zusammenarbeit mit der DenkForm GmbH bieten wir eine Schulung zum MBS Plugin an. Am 6. Februar 2020 (auch 7. Mai und 3. September) können Sie in Wiesbaden an einer eintägigen Schulung teilnehmen. Lernen Sie die über 5900 Funktionen einmal näher kennen und wie Sie sie effektiv einsetzen. Sammeln Sie Ideen und verbessern Sie ihre FileMaker Lösungen durch den Einsatz unseres Plugins.
Das Monkeybread Software Plugin für FileMaker stellt eine vielseitige Erweiterung der eigenen Datenbank dar. Der Kurs bietet nicht nur einen tiefgreifenden Überblick in die Benutzung und Entwicklung, sondern bietet auch die Chance das Plugin günstiger zu erstehen.
Einführung in das MBS Plugin
Überblick über die Funktionsbereiche
Neues im MBS Plugin dieses Jahr
Rundgang durch ausgewählte Beispiele
Gemeinsames Implementieren von Plugin Funktionen in eine Datenbank:
Upload/Download mit CURL auf einen HTTP/FTP Server
Ausfüllen eines Formulares auf einer Webseite
Bilder bearbeiten
PDF Verarbeitung
Druckerfunktionen
Adressbuch und Kontakte abfragen bei Mac OS X.
Fragen und Antworten
Die Teilnahme kostet 119 Euro inkl. MWSt. und Verpflegung.
Details und Anmeldung bei der Denkform.
Im Anschluss geht es noch zur Pizzeria zum FileMaker Stammtisch Rhein-Main.
An jedem ersten Donnerstag im Monat findet ab 19 Uhr der FileMaker Stammtisch Rhein-Main statt, zu dem jeder herzlichst eingeladen ist.
While FileMaker doesn't support dark mode, we managed to show our preferences dialog in dark mode:
As you see we added recently a checkbox for text positions in FileMaker dialogs.
The highlight everyone waited for happened on the second day:
Geoff Perlman, CEO of Xojo Inc. demonstrated live Android development in a future Xojo version. He changed code, run project in simulator and on device. You can watch a demo video on Youtube. Read more in our forum posting for today and lager on the Xojo blog.
Our conference is about to start. The room is open and awaits attendees:
We start at 9 o'clock and in the lobby before the room, you can find drinks and coffee.
Am 19. November 2019 veranstaltet die Medio-Ingeno AG einen FileMaker Event in der Schweiz, siehe FMNext.ch.
Diesmal bin ich wieder dabei und zeige ein paar Neuheiten im MBS Plugin.
Zahlreiche FileMaker Vorträge am Abend rund um FileMaker, Empfang und einem unterhaltsames Special am Ende.
This week our conference & training for Xojo starts.
We start today with some sight seeing for our international guests who arrive earlier.
Tonight we have dinner with everyone who is here already.
For all others, please come to the hotel bar tomorrow starting at 18 o'clock. We may offer you a drink and a snack there. Otherwise you can go with a group of people and find a nice restaurant.
We'll stay in the hotel bar to greet people as they arrive.
We posted some instructions for taking subway from central station to Heumarkt on the Xojo Forum: Subway to conference
At the local conferences in Europe, Claris International Inc. announced their new conference Claris Engage Europe 2020 to be held in Lisbon in Portugal from 26th to 28th October 2020.
This gives people from Europe two official Claris conferences in 2020 to attend, first the one in Nashville USA in August and second this new one in October 2020.
Beside maybe another conference in Japan, the APAC conference in Australia and some un-conferences like dotfmp.
We expect Claris to bring over a couple of engineers and presenters from the US conference. Details are to be announced in the new year, but as far as we know they will look for session proposals from local developers in Europe, so if you like to talk about a topic, maybe use winter to prepare something to submit. The conference may be multi lingual, so sessions may be in German or other languages beside English.
The hotel looks great. Renovated in 2015 it has 577 rooms on 18 floors, a pool, two restaurants, a cafe and a little shop. The conference space has capacity for around 500 attendees in multiple conference rooms with a total of 2500 sqm. We would be delighted to see 500 European Claris developers to join this conference!
At the FileMaker conference in Hamburg there was a nice idea from Russel Watson to extend the script workspace further. For our context menu showing in the script workspace, we give you a new function SyntaxColoring.AddContextMenuCommand to register a custom menu entry. You provide a title (with ¶ for submenus), an expression and wether you need a selection. Once the menu item is chosen the plugin will evaluate the expression.
We expect that some developers from the FileMaker community will provide their own database with various expressions you could install. Our examples for this function show a few possible commands. Our examples show you how to just add a dialog box. Another example uses Menubar.RunMenuCommand to ask FileMaker to copy the current script steps. Then Clipboard.GetFileMakerData is used to get the XML for the script steps. This XML can be modified and passed to Clipboard.SetFileMakerData to put it back on the clipboard and paste it again with Menubar.RunMenuCommand function. As you see, you can have commands to edit script steps in place with our new feature. You can include XSLT via XML.ApplyStylesheet, using a command line tool (Shell functions) or even an AppleScript.
Here is an example video:
Available soon in next MBS Plugin version. Email us if you like to try it out.
Right here at the FileMaker Konferenz in Hamburg we got a few new ideas for the MBS Plugin.
One is to show the cursor position within the text for calculations, so you can say which line something is. You can see the length of a selection:
To configure you can use a new checkbox in preferences dialog or use our newer SyntaxColoring.ShowTextPositions.SetEnabled to enable/disable it in code.
Works for FileMaker 16 and newer with next MBS Plugin. Testers welcome.
After the Windows crash report from earlier today where we couldn't do much, here is an example for one where we could help on MacOS.
When you find a crash report in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports folder (for server software) or ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports (for user software), you can try to read where it crashed and maybe avoid that code or fix the data processed by the code to avoid the problem.
The crash report we check today start with this basic info:
Date/Time: 2019-09-26 13:32:54.009 +0200
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.13.6 (17G8030)
Report Version: 12
Anonymous UUID: 3BB48127-8D6B-D79A-BCF9-09FEA3400430
As you can read, we have the process name fmscwpc, which is FileMaker Server Custom Web Publishing Client as far as I know. This is the process of FileMaker Server handling requests for WebDirect. It runs here on MacOS 10.13 and you see the timestamp when it happens. When you can reproduce the issue, you may get a few crash reports, so having times may help to distinguish them.
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On Windows if an application like FileMaker Server crashes, you'll find a dmp file for the crash. For example in C:\WINDOWS\MiniDump folder. Once you got the file, you wonder how to read it. It seems like the best was is to use WinDbg application from Microsoft.
First you download the Windows 10 SDK, mount the disk image and run the installer. From all the options in WinSDKSetup, you only need the entry for "Debugging Tools for Windows". All the other entries can be unchecked. So instead of installing several GB of data, only 160 MB are installed.
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Am 19. November 2019 findet eine MBS Schulung in Meilen am Zürichsee statt. Wir treffen uns ab 9 Uhr im Restaurant Löwen in einem separaten Schulungsraum. Nutzen Sie die Chance die 5000 Funktionen des MBS FileMaker Plugins kennen zu lernen und neue Ideen für Ihre FileMaker Lösungen mit zu nehmen.
Geplantes Programm:
Präsentation zum MBS Plugin mit einem Überblick über die Funktionalität.
Demonstration von neuen Funktionen in der Version 9.x.
Rundgang durch ausgewählte Beispiele
Zeit für Fragen
Bitte schicken Sie uns ihre Themenwünsche. Eventuell können wir gerne was zu Kartenleser, Barcodes, Webservices, MacOS Catalina oder Runtime Signieren/Notarisieren mit unterbringen.
Die Teilnahme kostet 150 CHF bzw. 135 Euro. Mittagessen im Restaurant inklusive.
Maximal 12 Teilnehmer. Anmeldung bei uns: Anmelden
PS: Die Schulung findet statt, da die Mindestteilnehmerzahl erreicht wurde.
Am gleichen Tag lädt die Medio-Ingeno AG zu einem FileMaker Event ein: FMnext XP III
Ab 17:30 Uhr gibt es im Gewölbekeller im Restaurant Löwen in Meilen ein buntes Programm mit Vorträgen zu FileMaker.
Mal wieder packen wir die Koffer und fahren zur Deutschen FileMaker Konferenz. Dieses Jahr findet in Hamburg die 10. FileMaker Konferenz statt. Wenn ich so durch zähle, habe ich neun mit erlebt, also alle bis auf die erste. Auf jeden Fall haben wir ein Jubiläum mit 10 Konferenzen organisiert vom Verein FM Konferenz und dazu noch das 25 Jahre Jubiläum vom K&K Verlag.
Fahren wir ganz entspannt nach Hamburg. Diesmal ohne Flugzeug, ohne verpassten Anschlussflug, ohne Umsteigen, ohne Sicherheitskontrolle, ohne Zoll und Grenze, ohne Vorabbuchung, einfach einsteigen in Koblenz am Bahnhof und dann in Hamburg wieder aussteigen.
Wir sind gespannt auf Stefanies ersten Vortrag zu den Kartenfunktionen im MBS Plugin. Mal schauen wie sich Stefanie schlägt und welche Fragen da kommen. Aber für Fragen bin ich ja auch noch da.
Einmal im Jahr trifft sich die Gemeinde der FileMaker Liebhaber und natürlich fragen wir uns was die vielen Kollegen eigentlich gemacht haben seit der Konferenz in Liechtenstein?
Welche Funktionen in FileMaker 18 kommen gut an und wo gibt es noch Probleme?
Wie ist das Interesse am FileMaker Marketplace, Claris Connect und der neuen FileMaker Cloud?
Welche neuen Tipps und Tricks sollte man wissen?
Freuen wir uns auf eine tolle Konferenz in Hamburg und vorher noch eine recht volle MBS Plugin Schulung. Kommen Sie am MBS Plugin Stand vorbei und bringen Sie ihre Fragen mit!
Improved JPEG detection for byte streams, so we can detect if a PNG is actually a JPEG. Now GMImage.NewFromContainer can read JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF and BMP even if they are passed in wrong container format.
Fixed problem on Windows with returning pictures, where Clipboard.GetPicture would return a flipped image.
Fixed problem with Clipboard.GetPicture, when the picture comes without alpha channel.
Fixed crash in Hash.Digest function when passing invalid file path for file.
Fixed CURL script trigger to avoid potential crash.
Fixed SQL connection cleanup to avoid potential crash.
Fixed a problem in the Linux version for FileMaker Cloud for AWS, which caused random crashes (introduced in August).
In the last week we did some heavy testing on FileMaker Servers with parallel running scripts. When you run a dozen scripts in parallel using the same MBS functions, there is a lot of code accessing the same global data in memory.
For example when one script walks over a list of objects and another script removes an item from that list, there could be a problem that first script accesses the just deleted item in the list. To avoid that we use a lot of mutex objects for synchronization.
For some months now we try to do automated tests to check if our mutex handling is rock solid. You may have seen the Plugin.CallCounter function we added and wonder who needs it. For us it's a great way to see how many calls the test made. With some test runs, this count goes up far over a million.
For version 9.3 we had a few bug reports from two users, who run into issues. We did some test scripts and found the issues, fixed them and got clients happy. Version 9.4 includes all the fixes with improved mutex handling to avoid global variable access for this and similar cases. But this week, we went further and discovered two other issues, which may cause trouble. As with all those tests, it's unlikely in the real world you have several scripts calling the same functions at the same time and actually see a problem in normal usage.
Nevertheless when you test something more, you find issues. We are happy to fix two potential issues, which no customer yet reported, but we found them in our own tests: One potential issue with CURL script trigger and one in SQL connection cleanup. For linux we found another issue, which can cause a memory corruption after a few hours and this may need thousands of calls. If you use MBS FileMaker Plugin on FileMaker Cloud for AWS, please try the 9.5pr3 version as soon as we get it uploaded tomorrow.
If you find a script that uses MBS FileMaker Plugin to sometimes crash, please let us know and we could try to repeat it here. Sometimes a function needs to be called a lot of times or in multiple parallel running scripts. Some crashes occur only with a low probability or depend on external factors like network conditions. We try hard to get the plugin rock solid for you.
The new FileMaker Cloud offer is coming soon. Claris International Inc. announced it at the FileMaker DevCon in Orlando this year and as far as we know it will be released to public later in October 2019.
Monkeybread Software has been able to test the new Cloud offering and we think it is a great upgrade for existing users. Within the next three years, we expect a lot of clients to move to the new Cloud offering. The improved consoles for management of the servers and the improved admin console alone may lead to some admins to request the move!
The older FileMaker Cloud for AWS is set get support till end of the year 2021. Not sure if the those FileMaker Cloud servers on AWS can run indefinitely or need to be migrated as eventually no licenses will be extended or security problems make it impossible to keep them running.
Currently we try to assemble a list of users with FileMaker Cloud for AWS and a need for MBS Plugin. We support FileMaker Cloud for AWS with a specific Linux plugin version since September 2016. Once the last client stops using our plugin on FileMaker Cloud for AWS servers, we can retire our support for this platform.
MBS Xojo Plugins in version 19.4 have been updated to handle changes for API 2.0 in Xojo 2019r2. A couple of plugin classes and functions have updated declarations to make them working with framework modifications. Our SQL Plugin got updated for prepared statement, which now has a SelectSQL function. MacCocoa, MacCF, ComputerControl and Util plugins got some declarations updated for console/web projects.
The Xojo plugin SDK functions for handling FSRef got removed as Xojo now uses CFURLRef internally for folder items. We updated a couple of plugin functions to now use CFURLRef or NSURL ourselves for file references. But as we still have some older plugin functions using FSRef to do work, we ourselves have support functions to create FSRef on the fly from CFURL and other way around. This keeps old code working. But if you use older plugins in Xojo 2019r2, you may see the following functions fail.
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New in this prerelease of version 9.5 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Updated zint library to version 2.6.7.
Updated SQLite to version 3.30.0.
Added new tag "smaller bigger sign color" for SyntaxColoring.AddTag function to give <> in formula a different color.
Added new tag "global variable color" for SyntaxColoring.AddTag function to give global variables a different color.
Fixed problem with returning NSImages. Now passing pixel size to FileMaker, so images with DPI > 72 show correctly in container. e.g. for PDFKit.GetPDFPageImage function.
Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.32.93.
Fixed FileDialog functions to not show always the create directory button.
Das MBS FileMaker Plugin ist mit mehr als 5900 Funktionen das größte für FileMaker erhältliche Plugin. Im September 2019 ist die Version 9.4 erschienen. Welche neuen Funktionen diese Version mit sich bringt, möchte ich in diesem Artikel verraten.
Barcodes mit JSON generieren
Sie können mit der neuen Funktion „Barcode.GenerateJSON“ Barcodes generieren, indem Sie den Text und weitere Eigenschaften als Elemente eines JSON Objektes übergeben. Ihr JSON könnte dann z.B so aussehen:
{
"symbology": "QRCode",
"Text": "Hello World",
"Scale": 4
}
Der Barcode wird als Bildreferenz zurückgegeben und kann dann z.B. mit der Funktion "GMImage.WriteToPNGContainer"in einen Container geschrieben werden.
Liste eingebetteter E-Mails
Die neue Funktion „EmailParser.AttachedEmails“ liefert uns eine Liste der ID’s der Emails, die in einer Mail eingebettet sind.
Audiodatei Informationen als JSON
Mit der Funktion „Files.AudioTags“ können sie Informationen zu einer Audiodatei abrufen. Sie bekommen diese Informationen dann als JSON Objekt zurückgeliefert. Das JSON Objekt kann Informationen wie Länge, Bitrate, Abtastrate und Kanal liefern. Aber auch weitergehende Informationen wie Künstler oder Titel werden im JSON als Objekt, falls vorhanden, angegeben. Im Gegenzug können wir mit der Funktion „Files.SetAudioTags" Informationen mit Hilfe eines JSON Objektes für eine Audio Datei setzen.
Learn something new. With API 2.0, new Web Framework and Android coming soon and recent changes for MacOS Catalina, take the chance to learn information from first hand and ask your questions.
Networking with peers Find new contacts, people that may help you with problems. Try to ask everyone what they do and build a list of experts. Meet the people from the Xojo forum and thank them for their help in the past.
Encounter new vendors and suppliers Meet developers from plugins, components, training and other services. Use their services to provide greater values to your clients.
Position yourself as an expert Let others know what you know and can do, so they can hire your services. Build a reputation as a valuable member of the community.
Have fun! Leave your office and have a great time with other developers. Use your visit to Cologne for some sight seeing.
FileMaker Inc. just released FileMaker in version 18.0.3 a few days ago.
This release includes the required info.plist keys and entitlements we asked for, so our functions for contacts, calendars, audio/video recording and much more works again. Those were limited or blocked with version 18.0.2 due to hardened runtime. So we are happy to see this improvements!
Please note that FileMaker made changes with Server and Client and you should prefer to update both at the same time to avoid trouble.
For runtimes, please notice that FileMaker Pro 18.0.2 and 18.0.3 use hardened runtime, so all runtimes loading external libraries like database driver or DynaPDF library needs to have those libraries code signed with the same team certificate as the main application.
The error message sounds like "code signature in xxx not valid for use in process using Library Validation: mapping process and mapped file (non-platfonn) have different Team IDs".
Fixed Constructor for EKCalendarMBS class to not complain about missing EKReminder class.
Fixed problem in DynaPDF with rendering Asian characters.
Fixed problem with DynaPDF Graphics to fill FigureShape objects.
Changed BackupInit in SQLite3MBS and SQLiteBackupInit in SQLConnectionMBS and SQLDatabaseMBS classes to take variant and accept both database and connection object for dest and source.
Added DB2SQLExecDirect and DB2SQLRowCount methods to SQLCommandMBS class.
For our German speaking clients we have a workshop day:
New in this prerelease of version 9.5 of the MBS FileMaker Plugin:
New in this prerelease of the 19.5 plugins:
This week our conference & training for Xojo starts. 
After the Windows crash report from earlier today where we couldn't do much, here is an example for one where we could help on MacOS. 
Am 19. November 2019 findet eine MBS Schulung in Meilen am Zürichsee statt. Wir treffen uns ab 9 Uhr im Restaurant Löwen in einem separaten Schulungsraum. Nutzen Sie die Chance die 5000 Funktionen des MBS FileMaker Plugins kennen zu lernen und neue Ideen für Ihre FileMaker Lösungen mit zu nehmen.
Mal wieder packen wir die Koffer und fahren zur Deutschen FileMaker Konferenz. Dieses Jahr findet in Hamburg die 10. FileMaker Konferenz statt. Wenn ich so durch zähle, habe ich neun mit erlebt, also alle bis auf die erste. Auf jeden Fall haben wir ein Jubiläum mit 10 Konferenzen organisiert vom Verein FM Konferenz und dazu noch das 25 Jahre Jubiläum vom K&K Verlag.
The new FileMaker Cloud offer is coming soon. Claris International Inc. announced it at the FileMaker DevCon in Orlando this year and as far as we know it will be released to public later in October 2019.
This release includes the required info.plist keys and entitlements we asked for, so our functions for contacts, calendars, audio/video recording and much more works again. Those were limited or blocked with version 18.0.2 due to hardened runtime. So we are happy to see this improvements!