Articles, Tips, Techniques & Samples

633 topics in this forum

1. 

   New in MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.5

   yesterday at 07:54 AM by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   In this article we want to introduce you the new functions from the MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 13.5. ListDialog A very cool new feature is in the ListDialog Component. Because we now have checkboxes for the list dialog. These can be displayed using the ListDialog.SetShowCheckboxes function. You can now check boxes either manually or by script. If you want to check the boxes by script, use the ListDialog.SetCheckedfunction. Here you enter the list index of the row you want to check followed by the value. 1 for check and 0 for do not check. You can use the ListDialog.GetCheckedfunction to determine whether a field in a particular row is checked or not. To do t…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, Yesterday at 07:54 AM
2. 

   Data structures in MBS Plugin

   Tuesday at 07:20 AM by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   Let us show you today the various data structures we have in MBS FileMaker Plugin and how to use them. QuickList Dictionary Matrix JSON References SQL Result In general you can keep huge amounts of data in memory to query them anywhere with a quick lookup in one of the data structures. Such a lookup may avoid needing extra relationships and can be faster than a database lookup. List Normally in FileMaker you may have a variable containing a list of values. You append something with a calculation like this: Set Variable [ $list; $list & $value & ¶ ] When you pass it around, you pass the whole list and e…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, Tuesday at 07:20 AM
3. 

   MBS @ FMTraining.TV - FileMaker Monkeybread Plug-in Update 13.4

   November 23 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch. 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 talk about the new MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.4 release: Announcement, release notes, new functions and download FileMaker Monkeybread Plug-in Update 13.4 FileMaker Monkeybread Plug-in Update 13.3 PDF Forms with Submit button for Adobe Reader using the FileMaker MonkeyBread Plug-in Debugging your FileMaker Servers with the MonkeyBread Plug-in Digital Docu…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 23
4. 

   MBS Function calls in blue

   November 22 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   When you enter a MBS function in a calculation on macOS, we show MBS in blue. The function name entered behind it as parameter turns blue if the function is known to the plugin. It will show in red while the function name is not correct. When you type something and you see it in red, then check for typos. As you see we check both parts of the function independently. If the whole name is mistyped, it is all red. If one part is right, we show that part as blue. It can happen that you get two parts correct, but not the whole function and then the quotes and dot are red only. This feature is always on if you have calculation coloring turned on via preferences …

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 22
5. 

   Format button for FileMaker

   November 21 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   We got a new format button labeled with "ƒ" for the calculation dialog in FileMaker on macOS. We parse the formula, detect which brackets belong together and then output the formula with additional whitespacing. Let's start with a formula we found in our documentation: You see the calculation has some spaces before and after the equal signs, but not much indention. Pressing the ƒ button on the bottom right toolbar, we get this output currently: As you see we indent, add whitespace around operators and break up lines based on their length to show parameters. This is the first version and we have some rules on this, but may fine t…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 21
6. 

   Check out the Snippets database example

   November 17 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   Did you know, that we have an example with snippets for writing scripts and makes them available in Script Workspace to insert via a hotkey? Included with MBS FileMaker Plugin. Please check the Snippets for Windows.fmp12 file. Beside it being for Windows, it can also work on MacOS if needed. So you may use it and then call the "Install Picker Dialog" script in your solution to install it, if you sign-in as developer. The database stores the snippets. If you click the export button, it writes the snippets to a folder. Then later when you hit the hotkey, we show a dialog and list all the snippets in that folder for you to pick one. Once picked, we insert…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 17
7. 

   Video of MBS FileMaker Plugin at EngageU 2023

   November 15 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   The presentation about MBS Plugin for EngageU conference. All movies Watch on YouTube. MBS2023.mp4 MBS2023.pdf

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 15
8. 

   Watch MongoDB Database

   November 9 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   Did you know that MongoDB has a watch feature (change stream) to see what happens in the database? You can watch a client (your connection) with MongoDB.WatchClient, a database with MongoDB.WatchDatabase or just a collection with MongoDB.WatchCollection function. Once watch is active, you can query MongoDB.NextChange regularly and see if you get a JSON with a new change. In our example database, we run a schedule to look for new changes every 5 seconds and this shows the change as new record in our example. You can use this feature for various purposes, including: Real-time Data Synchronization: You can use watch feature to keep data in syn…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 9
9. 

   Comment links with goto and script scheme

   November 3 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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   This may change how you write scripts. Your longer scripts may now have an index on top with goto: URLs jumping to specific lines. The goto:start and goto:end links may help to jump to start or end of the script. And script: links may jump to a different script. Let's start with script links. You put in the script name after the script: prefix. The plugin will read the name, decode percent escaped sequences and looks for a script in same file with the given name to show it. If you have special characters in the script name, please use GetAsURLEncoded() function in FileMaker to get the URL encoded properly, e.g. with %20 for spaces. This may look like this in t…

   

   Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 3
10. 

    Check Variables for Let

    November 2 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    As you may know we have a variable check for FileMaker script workspace for macOS in MBS FileMaker Plugin. This works fine for most scripts, but you may need to know a few pitfalls. Since the plugin reads what is in the script workspace window and FileMaker truncates long lines, it will not catch a variable mistyped in a very long line. When we read a calculation like this one: Let([ // define some variables $varDefined = 1; $secondVarDefined = 2]; $varDefined) The plugin sees it as Let([ // define some variables $varDefined = 1; $secondVarDefined = 2]; $varDefined) We don't get line breaks, so we have no idea where the comment ends and thus we can't find …

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 2
11. 

    Query current found set with Execute FileMaker Data API as JSON

    November 1 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Today we have a tip for you without using MBS FileMaker Plugin and in pure FileMaker. Let's say you like to query current records in your found set as JSON, how would you do this? First you need the list of the primary keys and we like to use a While() for this. For older FileMaker versions, you could use FM.Loop instead. The loop goes over found set and just queries primary key fields for all records in found set: While ( [ liste = ""; i = 0 ] ; i < Get(FoundCount) ; [ i = i + 1; liste = GetNthRecord ( FileMaker Ideas::PrimaryKey ; i ) & "¶" & liste ] ; liste ) We could store this in $Keys and then continue with building the reques…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 1
12. 

    List dialog with checkboxes

    October 31 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    As you may know, you can show a list dialog with MBS FileMaker Plugin by using our ListDialog functions. For next version 13.5 we add new functions for having checkboxes in the list. Screenshot from macOS: The list dialog can now operate in multiple modes: Like the simplest version would be to just show a list, the user double clicks an item and the dialog closes (or pick one and clicks select button). Other way would be to allow multiple selection (see ListDialog.SetAllowMultipleSelection) and then pick a few items from a list and click select button. If needed, the user may first use the filter to narrow selection. You can't ju…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, October 31
13. 

    19 years of FileMaker versions supported in MBS Plugin

    October 15 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Did you know the MBS FileMaker Plugin can run on all FileMaker versions from 7 to 20.2.1? As of today the current 32-bit Windows version can load in ancient FileMaker Pro 7. We don't expect clients to use that, but from time to time, a client asks about an older FileMaker version. We highly recommend to upgrade to a more recent version. As of today, we have about 21% of users with FileMaker 20.x, about 72% on some 19.x version and just about 6% on older versions. For macOS we support currently macOS 10.13 and newer in FileMaker 14 and newer. If you need plugins folder older macOS versions or 32-bit FileMaker Pro, please let us know. For Windows we support curre…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, October 15
14. 

    How long do you wait for Insert From URL to finish?

    October 14 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Did you know you can run CURL commands in background with MBS FileMaker Plugin? Let's start with a simple Insert From URL script like the following one. $url has the URL to query and $json the data to send to whatever web API you like to query. The headers include authentication and content types. Nothing special. The query runs and stores result in $$result and a log into $$debug. Here is the script: Set Variable [ $options ; Value: "-X POST --header \"Authorization: Basic <<API KEY>>\" --header \"Content-Type: application/json\" --header \"Accept: application/json\" --trace $$debug --data @$json " ] Insert from URL [ Select ; With dialog: Off…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, October 14
15. 

    Rome FileMaker Week 2023 - MBS Presentation

    October 13 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    A recording of Stefanie's presentation for Rome FileMaker Week 2023 to talk about what is new in MBS Plugin for Claris FileMaker. All movies Watch on YouTube. MBS-RomeFileMakerWeek-2023.mp4 MBS-RomeFileMakerWeek-2023.pdf

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, October 13
16. 

    JSON Query in FileMaker

    October 7 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Recently we got a request for JSONPath queries in FileMaker, so we looked into various ways on how to implement this. We found a way and got three new functions for you: MBS( "JSON.Query"; json; query; flags ) MBS( "JSON.Search"; json; path ) MBS( "JSON.Replace"; json; path; ReplaceJSON ) Please try them, e.g. run a query against them. Let us take this html: { "store": { "book": [ { "category": "reference", "author": "Nigel Rees", "title": "Sayings of the Century", "price": 8.95 }, { "category": "fiction", "author": "Evelyn Waugh", "title": "Sword of Honour", "pr…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, October 7
17. 

    New in MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.4

    September 21 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    In this article we want to introduce you the new functions from the MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 13.4. Phidget Let's start with the most comprehensive and coolest new feature of the release: Phidgets. Phidgets are small additional devices that you can connect to your computer and with which you can then input or output data. For example you can connect a small motor, a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, a gyroscope or a small LED display and exchange data with these devices. Since a few years we already have a plugin for Xojo, which allows the interaction with these small devices and we are proud to offer the use of these small devices now also for FileMak…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, September 21
18. 

    Build archives on the fly

    February 28 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    For 13.1 we get new Archive functions to build a zip archive on the fly. One of the use of deprecated ZipFile functions was to assemble an archive in memory from various files or containers. You can now do that with our Archive.Create function. Just call it to either start an on-disk or in-memory archive using the compression format and compression filter of your choice. We usually use zip for maximum compatibly, but you can also do tar or 7zip. Next you can add content. For that you may use Archive.AddContainer to pass a container value as variable or pass a field reference. We read the content of the container and compress it in memory. If you have existing…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, February 28
19. 

    Moving data from ODBC to FileMaker via script

    February 13 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    You have a SQL data source and you like to get JSON from it inside FileMaker to pass that JSON on to a web services or DATA API? Or you have a SQL source and you like to move records from it to FileMaker easily? Or other direction? Since MBS Plugin supports CubeSQL, Centura SQLBase, DB2, DuckDB, Firebird, Informix, InterBase, MariaDB, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, ODBC, Oracle Database Server, PostgreSQL, SQL Anywhere, SQLite, SQLCipher and Sybase as data source, we can help here. ODBC itself can of course be used for many more here. Let us show you a script to connect to a data source by its name used in the system. This means you…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, February 13
20. 

    More follow up on oAuth for Office 365

    February 12 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    There is more to come based on questions and feedback.IMAPIf you like to change our IMAP example to use oAuth, please use script steps like this:Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("CURL.SetOptionURL"; $curl; "imaps://outlook.office365.com/INBOX") ] Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("CURL.SetOptionXOAuth2Bearer"; $curl; "eyJ0eXAiOi...") ] // your oAuth tokenSet Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("CURL.SetOptionUserName"; $curl; "test@outlook.com") ] // no password needed!You remove the CURL.SetOptionPassword there and add the CURL.SetOptionXOAuth2Bearer with the token. For the URL make sure you have the imaps protocol with the s. A typo in the URL and nothing will work. Don't forget the …

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, February 12
21. 

    MBS @ FMTraining.TV - MBS Plugin 13.0

    February 10 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch. 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 talk about what is new in MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.0 including MongoDB, DynaPDF, CURL, new checkboxes in preferences and more. Claris FileMaker Monkeybread Plugin 13.0 Updates Webhooks in FileMaker with the MBS Plugin FileMaker Monkeybread Plugin Open Q&A Microsoft Office 365 Authentication with oAuth 2 How to build an iOS SDK App The FileMaker …

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, February 10
22. 

    OCR on Windows in FileMaker

    February 8 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Did you know that Windows 10 has a built-in OCR engine?For MBS FileMaker Plugin 13.1 we add new WindowsOCR functions. These functions allow the plugin on Windows 10 to use the built-in OCR classes and expose them as functions to you in FileMaker. This was made possible by dropping Windows 7 support, so we can now use the functionality from Windows 8 to use these classes. Although if you call them on Windows 8, they will return an error. Please use WindowsOCR.Available in your script to check whether it returns 1.Once you know you run on Windows 10 (or 11), you can check the available languages with WindowsOCR.AvailableRecognizerLanguages function. This function can return…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, February 8
23. 

    Data Viewer extensions in MBS Plugin

    January 12 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Let us show you nine features of MBS FileMaker Plugin around the data viewer in FileMaker. While all are available on macOS, only one is also available on Windows: Toggle data viewer To show or hide the data viewer, just run MBS("Menubar.RunMenuCommand"; 49297) to trigger the menu command. Of course you need a menu set where this command is included and sufficient permissions. You can define a hotkey via MBS FileMaker Plugin to show an hide the data viewer via a keyboard shortcut on macOS and Windows: Set Variable [$hotkey; Value:MBS("HotKey.Register"; "F5"; "control")] Set Variable [$r; Value:MBS( "HotKey.SetEvaluate"; $hotkey; "MBS(\"Menubar.RunMenuComm…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, January 12
24. 

    ISO FileMaker Magazine: MonkeyBread Plug-In for Claris/FileMaker

    January 11 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Check out the FileMaker Magazine website. Matt Petrowsky provides a huge collection of training videos around FileMaker. And recently he started a series of videos about our MBS Plugin: Watch it on YouTube and subscribe to his channel. Matt presents a few of our free enhancements for the FileMaker Pro development workspace for macOS. Watch it on YouTube and subscribe to his channel. Matt presents how to look through our documentation and find useful functionality. Watch it on YouTube and subscribe to his channel. Matt shows how he uses MBS functions and walks through our examples.

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, January 11
25. 

    MBS @ FMTraining.TV - MBS Q&A

    January 10 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch. 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 talk about what was new in 2022 in the MBS Plugins, our 24 day series about GraphicsMagick on the blog and we answered several questions. FileMaker Monkeybread Plugin Open Q&A Microsoft Office 365 Authentication with oAuth 2 How to build an iOS SDK App The FileMaker Monkeybread Plug-in 12.5 Updates Using a JavaScript library in FileMaker via the MBS …

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, January 10
26. 

    Additional iOS Script Triggers

    December 31, 2022 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    We have some additional script triggers for iOS to use in your FileMaker iOS app: Did Become Active Triggered when the app becomes active. Did Enter Background Triggered when the app enters the background. Did Receive Memory Warning The app receives a warning from the operating system about low memory availability. Significant time change The system posts this notification when, for example, there’s a change to a new day (midnight), a carrier time update, or a change to, or from, daylight savings time. The notification doesn’t contain a user info dictionary. Will enter foreground Triggered shortly before an app leaves the backg…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, December 31, 2022
27. 

    ISO FileMaker Magazine: MonkeyBread Plug-In for Claris/FileMaker - Part 1

    December 21, 2022 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    • 104 views

    Check out the FileMaker Magazine website. Matt Petrowsky provides a huge collection of training videos around FileMaker. And recently he started a series of videos about our MBS Plugin: Watch it on YouTube and subscribe to his channel. Matt presents a few of our free enhancements for the FileMaker Pro development workspace for macOS.

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, December 21, 2022
28. 

    Run JavaScript synchronously in a WebViewer

    December 20, 2022 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    Did you know, that you can run JavaScript in a WebViewer directly and get back the result right away? In FileMaker Pro, Claris Pro and your FileMaker iOS SDK based app, you can use WebView functions from MBS FileMaker Plugin. Please take a look at the WebView.Evaluate function: MBS( "WebView.Evaluate"; WebViewerRef; Expression ) You pass in the reference to the web viewer and whatever JavaScript expression you like to evaluate it. Just like the Evaluate() in FileMaker, but with JavaScript. If you name your WebViewer "web" on the current layout and you have a website loaded ("about:blank" is enough), you can run a calculation like this: MBS( "WebView.Evalua…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, December 20, 2022
29. 

    MBS FileMaker Plugin 12.5 News

    November 27, 2022 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    • 41 views

    In this article we want to introduce you the new functions from the MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 12.5. One Plugin for FileMaker AND Claris Recently, the first version of the Claris product line has been released. We are proud to announce that our plugin will also work on the new platform and you can use it there as usual. The best thing is that you can use the same plugin file for FileMaker and the new Claris. This is the first and currently the only plugin worldwide that works on both platforms equally. MongoDB Watch video about MongoDB MongoDB and MBS - A look under the hood Since version 12.3 there is the possibility to connect …

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 27, 2022
30. 

    SMTP with OAuth for Office 365 in FileMaker

    November 23, 2022 by Monkeybreadsoftware

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    For years we had the XOAuth2Bearer option in our CURL functions for our plugins. Any customer asking for how to use oAuth with Microsoft or Gmail got pointed to this property. Register an application with Microsoft or Google to get your client ID & secret. Then show a login screen in a browser for the user to login and grab the token. There are plenty of frameworks available and implementations in various programming languages. Once you got the access token, you can pass it to the CURL XOAuth2Bearer option. Since this is some work, we today like to show you sample scripts in FileMaker to do this: Continue reading: SMTP with OAuth for Office 365 in Fi…

    

    Last reply by Monkeybreadsoftware, November 23, 2022