The new year is starting with a week of
FileMaker broadcast sessions and you can watch them live for free or later on
Youtube:
We start on Monday with showing
FileMaker enhancements on macOS. Since we have so many, we split it in two days with introduction on first day and second day for Script Workspace. This way we have more time to explain each feature in detail. Maybe you know a few, but I bet you find a new gem here!
For Windows, we could do a session, too. Since we have hotkeys on Windows and can also inspect clipboard with the XML FileMaker stores there, it would be possible to make some nice things for FileMaker on Windows. e.g. press a hotkey, show a dialog with snippets and then insert them into the current script. See blog post
Insert snippet for FileMaker on Windows. Interested? Let us know.
New in this prerelease of version 11.6 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
Dropbox folder or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
New in this prerelease of version 11.6 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
Dropbox folder or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
Once again our friends in Canada organise a FileMaker conference in Montreal, so time to practice some French:
Update: Conference moved to 15th September!
Le Regroupement FMQC.CA vous convie à son grand rassemblement, les 24-25 mars 2022, à l’Auberge Saint-Gabriel du Vieux-Montréal, afin d’apprendre les astuces enseignées par des intervenants de la scène internationale et de découvrir les nouveautés de la plateforme FileMaker qui nous tient tant à cœur et qui nous passionne.
Un total de 14 sessions et topos seront présentés par des intervenants provenant de la France, des États-Unis, de l’Ontario et du Québec. La CQDF 2022 regroupera près de 100 développeurs de tous les niveaux, qui ensemble, rejoignent un bassin de plus de 5000 utilisateurs FileMaker de tous les coins du Québec ainsi qu’ailleurs dans le monde.
Situé en plein cœur du Vieux-Montréal, l’Auberge Saint-Gabriel est à quelques minutes de marche de la station de métro Place d’Armes (ligne Orange). L’accès internet sans fil sera offert tout au long des conférences.
Vous pouvez vous inscrire directement sur le site web de la conférence avant le 12 juin 2022 et ainsi profiter d’un rabais «Réservation hâtive» de 50$ sur les frais d'inscription.
Monkeybread Software sponsors this event and if possible, I hope to see you there!
New in this prerelease of version 11.6 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
Dropbox folder or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.
For a couple of years we do various things in FileMaker Script Workspace like
syntax coloring. We got a copy command once we started to read all lines in a script. Later we added checks to find usage of
undeclared variables, so you easier spot typos in your variable names. Now we go one step further: We scan for variables and present you a list of names we know.
When you have a script open in the Script Workspace and you open a calculation dialog, you can now auto complete. Just go into a calculation dialog for a Set Variable or Set Field or any of the other script steps taking a calculation. Then type something. We have a switch there, so only when you type a $ symbol, our plugin activates. Otherwise it lets the request pass to FileMaker to auto complete field and function names.
To find the variable names, we scan the script from the current selected line for currently up to 500 lines upwards. The limit can be adjusted with
SyntaxColoring.CheckVariableDeclaration.SetLimits function if needed. We hope that is for now enough to find the common variable names you like to use. If you keep working in one script workspace, we retain global variable names, we see, so you may see them in auto complete for multiple scripts.
Like with the variable check, we support declaring variables in comment lines. That is a kind of workaround for the plugin not seeing into global variables list from FileMaker or parsing Let statements. You can define comments with a prefix @variable, @parameter or @constant or actually shorter with @var, @param and @const if you prefer. The plugin will notice them and use them for variable name checking as well as auto complete. If you use common global variables in the script, you may just declare them on the top as a comment:
# This script uses the following global variables, initialized in our start script:
# @variable $$UserName
# @variable $$WebServiceAuth
This feature was developed on the weekend of 27th/28th November 2021 and a bit tuned in the following week. We also got a command for the context menu to copy the list of variables defined in a script. Please try it soon with either pr1 or better pr2 tomorrow. Let us know if you see issues, problems or it just works for you.
More details here
If you like to see the IDs for your value lists and later reference them in your scripts, check out the new option in the upcoming
MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 11.6pr2 or newer:
If enabled in preferences dialog or via
SyntaxColoring.SetShowValueListIDs function, the
MBS FileMaker Plugin will query FileMaker's ValueListNames and ValueListIDs functions to assemble the lists and show right in the table the ID.
You can use
FM.ValueListIDForValueListName and
FM.ValueListNameForValueListID later in scripts to pick the name of a value list by ID or otherwise. Or just do the same via custom functions if you prefer that.
We'll provide 11.6pr2 next week, so keep checking our blog or mailing list for the announcement.
Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch. And they have a huge library of FileMaker training material to watch and learn all about the Claris FileMaker product family.
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 show you what is new for MBS FileMaker Plugin in the upcoming version 11.6 and answer user questions.
Do you like this video?
Please let Richard know and send him your wishes or ideas for future live broadcast as well as topics for training videos. And check out the FileMaker Training bundles as well as their new book for FileMaker, updated for 2021.
New in this prerelease of version 11.6 of the
MBS FileMaker Plugin:
- Added SQL.GetFieldAsNumber, SQL.GetParamAsNumber and SQL.SetParamAsNumber to better handle numeric values.
- Changed how we handles numbers in SQL functions to better handle numeric values and avoid conversion of numeric to floating pointer numbers.
- Changed variable coloring and checks to allow exclamation mark in variable names.
- Changed XML parsing to explicit disable network access.
- Fixed a case where @param comments where not found with several spaces before the variable name.
- Fixed a problem in CURL.GetHeaderAsJSON introduced in v11.5.
- Fixed an edge case for syntax coloring with block comments to color the full comment.
- Fixed Container.ReadFile to read empty files.
- Fixed SyntaxColoring to colorize calculations starting with $ variable.
- Updated archive library to version 3.5.2.
- Updated cpuid library to version 0.51.
- Updated curl to version 7.80.0.
- Updated expat library to version 2.4.1.
- Updated lz4 library to version 1.9.3.
- Updated openssl to version 1.1.1l.
- Updated ssh2 library to version 1.10.0.
- Updated SystemInfo.CPUBrandString to work on Apple Silicon.
- Fixed a potential problem in SQL.InsertOrUpdateRecords function where it could crash with too many primary keys.
Download at
monkeybreadsoftware.com/filemaker/files/Prerelease/, in
Dropbox folder or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.