MBS Plugin Dev Highlights

Like many other FileMaker developers, I have gone through my fair share of plugins over the years of FM development. Some extend FM functions, some enhance the debugging process, while others are multipurpose tools for FM development. One multi-tool in particular is the MonkeyBread Software Plugin, which adds over 3700 functions that greatly extend the default FileMaker functionality. These functions range from additional libraries, SQL Connectivity, extending PDF capabilities, barcodes… the list goes on. I have been using the MBS plugin for quite some time, but the most recent iterations add some notable features, thus this blog post of my 3 most used MBS plugin functions.

First, there’s syntax coloring. For as long as I can remember, syntax coloring in FileMaker has been one of the most requested features by developers. In FileMaker 14, some syntax coloring was added to the new-and-improved Script Workspace, but the MBS plugin enhances the coloring within the Script Workspace and extends that to calculations and the debugger.

In version 5.4, they added the functionality to search within both the Script Workspace and relationship graph. After years of developing with other IDEs, this was another long sought feature for the FileMaker platform. The plugin adds a small search field in the top-right of the Script Workspace window. When text is entered, each line of the script containing that search value is highlighted. There is one small limitation in that the search is limited to the viewable area in side the Script Workspace. For example, if a defined variable calculation extends the width of the viewable workspace, the MBS search will not “see” that text. The search within the relationship graph performs in similar fashion. When text is entered the search field, located at the bottom-right of the window, it not only auto-completes based on the existing table names, but also navigates to the table in question.

Last, and most certainly not least, is the “Copy Script Text” button, located at the top-right of the Script Workspace. This button takes the viewable contents of the current script in the Script Workspace and copies it as text to the OS clipboard. From there, you can do with it as you wish. For me, I use it to paste the script into another script editor like TextMate or TextWrangler, which allows for more complex searching, editing, or what have you. It’s especially helpful when searching through a number of cascading scripts. 

There you have it. My 3 most used features of the MBS plugin. The plugin has innumerable uses, so I encourage you to give it a whirl and share your thoughts!

~Joe Ranne

Removing White Space From Text Fields

Removing white space in text fields is nothing new for FileMaker, but removing extra space before carriage returns ( “¶” for short ) from a delimited list, requires a little bit more than the simple trim function that is provided in FileMaker.

The trim function in FileMaker will remove unneeded spaces at the beginning and end of a text string. This is very helpful for a single line of text. It will take a line of text like
" Bob " and turn it into "Bob".

Unfortunately when you have several lines of text that are delimited by a ¶ character as in the following example, you will need something else.

example:

"Allison¶
Bob ¶
Charlie¶
Doug"

If you want to make sure none of the lines have an extra space at the end like the second line "Bob ¶", a simple trim will not work.

This is where the substitute function can come in handy. 

Substitute(text;searchString;replaceString)

The Substitute Function will search for a character or string and replace it with whatever character or string you choose. With this you can take a text field like the example above and use the substitute function to replace the occurrences of " ¶" with a single "¶".

 Substitute ( example ; " ¶" ; "¶" );
(notice there is a space before the ¶ in the searchString)

This will provide you with the corrected:

"Allison¶
Bob¶
Charlie¶
Doug"

You can apply the same substitute several times to remove multiple spaces, and when mixed with the trim function, it can really help clean up text and lists.

Substitute is one of my favorite functions for working with text. If you haven't used it before, give it a try and see if it can't help remove unwanted white space.

 -Xandon

FileMaker Cross Reference Tools

Many FileMaker solutions are relatively straightforward systems and it’s possible for a person to be fully aware of all aspects of the application, especially if that person is the one who designed and developed the entire solution. However, when an application grows beyond a certain size, or multiple developers are involved, or you’ve inherited someone else's work, you need a tool like Inspector Pro or Base Elements. 

These tools take the FileMaker Pro XML database design report (DDR) and turn them into a cross-indexed database about your database. Tools like these are invaluable, particularly in multi-file solutions.  

Inspector Pro 5 was recently released, and in the process of checking out what’s new, I used it to figure out where some credit card charging code was being called from in an invoicing solution. I had already done this a few days previously using the HTML DDR. Testing Inspector Pro 5 turned out to be a fortunate coincidence, because it showed that a particular form was being referenced as the layout to be switched to when the file opens. The HTML DDR didn’t show that, leading me to conclude, incorrectly, that the layout wasn’t being used. 

Inspector also does a good job of highlighting script problems like references to missing layouts or scripts, but the primary thing I use it for is to help me determine where a given object is being referenced throughout the database. It’s especially useful when re-factoring a complex database.

The user interface takes some getting used to. It is very information-dense and I don’t think the navigation interface is very intuitive.

I haven’t used Base Elements, but it serves essentially the same purpose as Inspector Pro. If you’ve never used either one, I’d suggest checking them out.

iText and FileMaker: Solving a PDF Problem

How to merge PDFs and consecutively number them in FileMaker - Sounds like it should be easy, almost built in, but it is not. Adding page numbers to PDFs is not a trivial task without additional software like Adobe Acrobat. Merging several FileMaker reports with additional PDFs and adding consecutive page numbers to the new document seems like it requires magic. I recently had the opportunity to try my hand at this elusive problem and found that if you are familiar with Java and it is done correctly, it can make for a great solution to many workflow issues. A special thanks to Matt Petrowsky for his great example file that was very helpful at getting me started.

Click to read more ...

Super Hi Res Monitor

I spent a rather dumb amount of time recently trying to get my MacBook Pro to display more than 1920x1440 on my external 27" monitor. At that resolution, I'm just not taking very good advantage of the size of the monitor. In FileMaker (and other apps) having the higher resolution allows you to deal with multiple windows and palette windows more effectively.

It turned out that my monitor simply wasn't capable of displaying anything higher than that resolution.

I decided to get rid of my old monitor and purchased an Asus monitor capable of displaying 2560x1440. It was a little expensive, but now I'm really enjoying the additional screen real estate, particularly in FileMaker when I'm using the debugger and data viewer.

-- John Newhoff