In a few weeks FileMaker developer from Québec in Kanada meet for a conference in Montréal:
The 5th edition of the
Conférence québécoise des développeurs FileMaker (CQDF) will take place on 25, 26 and 27 May 2015 Hotel Le St-Sulpice, located in Old Montreal. MBS will be present with a short presentation and available all days for questions and personal demonstration of the plugin features you like to learn more about.
We got a new idea on how to copy a lot of records from one FileMaker table to another. And those tables can be in different fields. We can preserve the data type, so everything is not converted to text while copying. And we can do modifications like have source and dest use different field names. Finally you can include calculations and join data from several tables.
How we do it?
We combine a SQL select query with insert commands. So we can make a query and use result to create new records.
For that we got two new functions for next plugin version:
FM.InsertRecord and
FM.InsertRecordQuery.
Now you can call it like this:
MBS( "
FM.InsertRecordQuery"; ""; "ExportContacts"; "First¶Last¶Company"; ""; "SELECT \"First\", \"Last\", \"Company\" FROM Contacts" )
This will query the fields First, Last and Company from a table called Company in current file. Than it will insert those as new records into the table ExportContacts.
Another example here:
MBS( "
FM.InsertRecordQuery"; ""; "SalesReport"; "SumSales¶CustomerID"; ""; "SELECT sum(\"InvoiceTotal\"), \"CustomerID\" FROM Contacts, Invoices GROUP by CustomerID" )
This does create records in table SalesReport. For the query we use SQL features like grouping by CustomerID and summing up the InvoiceTotal fields. This way we can easily collect data for a sales report into a new table. This table can than feed a chart or be exported.
What do you think? Is this useful? Will be included in 5.1pr7 soon. Or just email for a copy if you like to try.
Yesterday we met with a couple of FileMaker developers from Dallas and enjoyed some excellent Mexican food:
Talking about FileMaker's future, problems and chances, new plugin ideas and use cases, about differences between Germany and USA and a lot of more.
It was a great time and well worth a 3 hour drive.
Are you a FileMaker from Dallas, Texas area?
We meet with a group of FileMaker developers on Monday night, April 27th, and we're having a casual dinner get together. The meeting is at 6:30pm at Chiladas at 4448 Lovers Lane, Dallas, TX 75225 where Taylor Sharpe reserved a table for us.
If you like to come, please be sure to contact us so we know how many seats we need.
PS: Friday (1st May) is the regular meeting at 11am with FMNUG which you also can attend.
New in this prerelease of the 5.1 plugins:
- Added Clipboard.GetFiles and Clipboard.SetFiles functions.
- Upgraded Xcode to version 6.3.1
- Fixed Twain.SetDuplexEnabled so you can now disable duplex.
- Added OCR.SetResolution function.
- Added parameter to Text.DecodeFromHTML to decode html entities, but leave xml entities there.
- Added function FM.NULL to get null values to pass to SQL.SetParamValue(s).
- Added parameter to XML.Query to ignore errors in parsing.
- Added SQL.GetFieldValue, SQL.GetParamValue, SQL.SetParamValue and SQL.SetParamValues.
- Added FM.SQL functions to get SQL results in native data types.
- Added SerialPort.SetDataAvailableHandler and SerialPort.ClearDataAvailableHandler functions.
- The Audit.Change function now returns an error message if the given table name is invalid.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
Yesterday I met some FileMaker developers in Munich and in our discussion at one point there was a talk about the fact that executing SQL in FileMaker gives you only text. No way to get back the field value in it's original type. Containers are returned as file name, dates/times converted to text as well as numbers.
So today I wrote a few new plugin functions:
FM.SQL.Execute takes a SQL query and optional a file name and parameters. The query is executed and the function returns an error message or on success a reference number. This reference number can be used to query data from the result.
FM.SQL.RowCount tells you the number of rows while
FM.SQL.FieldCount tells you the number of fields in each row.
FM.SQL.Field returns a field value and
FM.SQL.FieldType the type of that field. Finally you use
FM.SQL.Release to release the result from memory.
The great thing is that you can now use the plugin to run queries and get containers, dates, times and numbers back from the result without conversion to text. With next prerelease plugins we'll include an example database which shows this.
We arrived in Munich and enjoy the city. Tonight is our Xojo meeting followed by the FileMaker meeting tomorrow.
Someone wants to join? We already have a couple of people on the list, but one or two can be added spontaneously.
16th April, Xojo meeting in Munich
17th April, FileMaker meeting in Munich
20th April, Xojo meeting in Nuremberg
21st April, FileMaker meeting in Nuremberg
If you like to join us for dinner, please add yourself. We'll reserve a table in a nearby restaurant, meet and chat about development. Entry is free, but you have to pay for your dinner and drinks.
New in this prerelease of the 5.1 plugins:
- Fixed a problem with Audit function not writing data in FileMaker 12.
- Optimized some functions for future FileMaker version.
- Functions like IsServer now also work if demo mode expired.
- Improved some of the Windows Webviewer functions to handle memory usage better.
- Added Windows support for WebView.LoadHTML.
- Fixed a bug with WebView.GetFormTextAreaValue on Windows which did crash sometimes.
- Added MarkDown functions.
- Fixed WebView.SetFormSelectValue to work also if there is no form name given.
- The Webviewer Form and Field functions now find fields and forms by ID on Mac and not just by name.
- Fixed bug in Text.EncodeToHTML.
- Upgraded Xcode to version 6.3
- Future plugin versions may decide to query server for update information while in development.
- Added EnvironmentVariables functions.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
Today I spend a couple of hours tracking down a bug with FileMaker and webviewer.
So if you load a webpage in a webviewer and this website installs window.onbeforeunload event and you close the FileMaker window or switch to layout mode, FileMaker crashes.
Normally the onbeforeunload event is used to warn user that closing window will loose form data. This is normally very useful, but FileMaker doesn't wait for the dialog to complete. Instead it crashes.
To solve this problem I found after a few hours that you only need to clear the onbeforeunload event like this:
MBS( "
WebView.RunJavaScript" ; "HTMLEditor"; "window.onbeforeunload = null;")
So the solution for client we simply call this whenever we do something with webview and especially before we switch layout.
The German
Filemaker conference is scheduled for Hamburg from 8th to 10th October 2015.
Registration is opened and 180 guests are expected to come. Last year sold out, so be quick.
New in this prerelease of the 5.1 plugins:
- Added SQL.GetFieldNameList, SQL.GetFieldValueList, SQL.GetParamNameList and SQL.GetParamValueList functions.
- Added Plugin.SetSuccessReturn function.
- Added Folders.UserTrash function.
- Added WebView.InstallMultiFileOpenDialog function to allow multiple selection file dialogs in a webviewer.
- Changed PDFKit preview rendering of PDF pages to take care of rotation.
- Added FM.DisableMouseWheel for Windows to block mouse wheel usage.
- Improved error message handling for Firebird database connector part in SQL functions.
- Changed RegEx.FindMatches to switch ReturnWholeMatch parameter to true if you don't have captures in your search pattern.
- Added Plugin.SetSuccessReturn and Plugin.GetSuccessReturn to modify what plugin returns for success.
- Added SQL error code into error messages for SQL.Execute and other functions.
- Fixed problem in Files.GetPathFromNodeID function.
- Added text encoding parameter for Barcode functions. Default stays at UTF-8.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
With HTML 5 the HTML Input File tag can have a multiple attribute and allow multiple files to be selected. But you only get that in an application if the application supports it. FileMaker and Xojo don't not really support it, but we can add it with our plugin:
For MBS FileMaker Plugin you can use the
WebView.InstallMultiFileOpenDialog function. The next time you click such a file button, the dialog allows multiple selection if website supports it also.
With MBS Xojo Plugin, you can use WebUIDelegateMBS class. We'll add there new methods and parameters for multiple files support.
All coming soon with new plugin prerelease.
