Generating Spreadsheets with LibXL

July 28, 2023July 29, 2023 Kevin Frank

Introduction

From time to time FileMaker developers are tasked with generating Excel spreadsheet output. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, in some cases via native FileMaker commands (Export, Save/Send Records), and in other cases using various workaround methods — some of which have appeared on this site in years past.

Today we’re going to look at producing spreadsheet output via LibXL, with help from a plug-in. Why bother? Several benefits immediately come to mind, including… power and flexibility, ease of implementation, and not having to add helper fields, tables, etc., to your database schema. With a plug-in you will typically do all the work at the script level, and generate feature-rich spreadsheets that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to produce from within FileMaker.

Demo file: Generating-Spreadsheets-with-LibXL.zip
(requires FM 19.5 or later)

Goya FMXL plug-in: https://goya.com.au/excel-plugin-for-filemaker

This plug-in is required for the demo to function. If unregistered it will add a trial notice banner at the top of the spreadsheet.

Note: if you are a Monkeybread user, MBS also offers an add-on plug-in for LibXL. The function calls are similar in both, and if you’re so inclined today’s demo file can be adapted to work with the MBS version. See documentation here, which can be helpful when using the Goya plug-in as well.

Continue reading “Generating Spreadsheets with LibXL” →

JSON, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 19.5 or later

JSON Custom Functions for FM, part 3

June 25, 2023August 8, 2023 Kevin Frank

This article is part of a series. See also…
• JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 1
• JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2

Demo file: json-custom-functions-part-3.zip

Note: some of these CFs make use of JSONGetElementType so require FM 19.5 or later.

Disclaimer: use at your own risk, these CFs may contain bugs, these CFs may not be performant when processing large amounts of data, always test carefully before deployment, etc., etc., etc.

Continue reading “JSON Custom Functions for FM, part 3” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 13 or later

A Fresh Approach to Deduplication

May 30, 2023May 30, 2023 Kevin Frank

Editor’s Note: Today I’m pleased to present a guest article by Jon Rosen featuring a creative and performant approach to removing duplicate records.

Recently, I had a situation where I had a found set of more than 500,000 records, but over ⅔ of them were duplicates. To remove the dupes, I initially went with the time-honored method I’ve been using for the last twenty years. I’ve been using it so long, that the original version used global fields because script variables hadn’t been created, yet. But now it seemed to run glacially slow on this large file.

After giving it some thought, I came up with a new method of deleting duplicates that turned out to be simpler and many times faster than the older method. So, let’s start with a review of the original method. There’s a good chance you may be using it yourself.

Eliminate Duplicates (Old Method)

Continue reading “A Fresh Approach to Deduplication” →

JSON, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 19.5 or later

JSON – Force Standard Notation

March 31, 2023June 10, 2023 Kevin Frank

Introduction

This is a follow up to a behavior I mentioned last month where FileMaker’s JSON functions can transform a number into scientific notation when you might prefer to have that number remain in standard notation.

Demo file: json-force-standard-notation.zip

Note: demo file uses JSONGetElementType so requires FM 19.5 or later.

The overall functionality of the demo was covered last time. This time we’re going to focus on working around the behavior, followed by some related observations… but first let’s review. Continue reading “JSON – Force Standard Notation” →

JSON, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 18 or later, Virtual List

JSON Currency Exchange Rates revisited

February 27, 2023May 27, 2023 Kevin Frank

Demo file: json-rates-via-api-exchangerate-host.zip

Today we’re going to take a fresh look at pulling currency exchange rates into FileMaker, and this article is directly based on its predecessor. Why the re-visitation? Two reasons actually:

The “free” endpoints I relied on back in 2020 (and in 2021 when I revised the original demo) have been monetized, and apart from any cost considerations, I want this demo to work out of the box without requiring an API token.
The check box set I used for symbol selection last time was designed to accommodate a fixed and relatively small number of entries. That was a short-sighted decision that could not possibly scale gracefully. This time around I’m using an approach that will automatically accommodate any number of symbols.

Continue reading “JSON Currency Exchange Rates revisited” →

Beverly Voth, Claris Platform, Claris Pro, Claris Studio, Level: Intermediate

Claris Studio (part 4): Forms the easy way!

January 30, 2023January 31, 2023 beverlyvoth

About the author: Beverly Voth has been in the Claris FileMaker community many years. In addition to FileMaker Pro and its integrated products, she is a Full Stack Web developer & SQL database administrator. The only recipient of the FileMaker Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to the FileMaker Web Publishing Community (DevCon 2003), she’s been advocating Claris FileMaker and web since they could work together.

This article covers more Views, a little errata from past articles (Parts 1, 2, & 3), and where we go from here. This is the final article of the planned four. But if something really inspiring materializes, there may be followup article(s). Some famous “trilogies” (films and books, especially) have gotten additional content, so why not?

Welcome back! The Spreadsheet View and the Dashboard View are not the only features of Claris Studio. I chose them to discuss first because the Spreadsheet has more information about the tables and fields. That information may be helpful on all Views. But we have other Views: anonymous Form submission, a List-Detail View (suitable for searching, adding, editing), a Kanban View (just another way to present the data & edit it), and some new ones since the last article. Remember that Dashboards are created from the Spreadsheet View only, so they do not appear on this graphic:

Click on the Create New View button to see these options.

We can start with one of these views to create the “table” or we can start with existing data (from a Spreadsheet setup or migrated from Claris Pro). Let’s get started with a review of the Forms. Continue reading “Claris Studio (part 4): Forms the easy way!” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 19.5 or later, Virtual List

A Summary Field Bug and Workaround

December 28, 2022 Kevin Frank

Introduction

Recently a client asked me to implement a virtual list reporting framework similar to the one I wrote about a few years ago in Virtual List Simplified. I added the framework to the client’s hosted file, and things went smoothly until I ran a report similar to the one shown below… and observed that the repeating summary field at the bottom wasn’t rendering. The same report worked flawlessly a) offline, and b) when hosted on FMS 19.4 and earlier, but when hosted via FMS 19.5 or 19.6, the summary repeater was malfunctioning.

Continue reading “A Summary Field Bug and Workaround” →

Beverly Voth, Claris Platform, Claris Pro, Claris Studio, Level: Intermediate

Claris Studio (part 3) – Spreadsheet: Details, please!

November 1, 2022November 1, 2022 beverlyvoth

This is part three of a series on the new Claris platform. We introduced the overview, Claris Studio, Tell Me More! on 29 September 2022, and Claris Studio (part 2) – Integration with Claris Pro on 12 October 2022. This article gets into more details on the different types of views in Claris Studio. Since the spreadsheet view will likely be a most common usage for many, this article will be devoted to it. The spreadsheet view in Claris Studio has plenty of goodies & features, and can be used to create Dashboard views (charts and summary text).

A new spreadsheet view – with default fields, table name, & view name

Claris Studio, Spreadsheet View

Of all the views available in Claris Studio, the spreadsheet is a very flexible table for data entry & editing, sorting & grouping. These web-based data grids (tables) are more robust than FileMaker/Claris Pro table view, better than web viewer data tables (easier at least!), but probably not as full-featured as Excel or Numbers spreadsheets. There are no “cell” formulas or references as in some spreadsheets, but there is a way to present a grid of rows & columns for data entry, viewing, and reporting. Web-based data grids may use methods that allow drag-and-drop re-arrangement of rows and/or columns, as you will find in Claris Studio’s spreadsheet.

There are several JavaScript & CSS techniques & frameworks or libraries used for tables on the web. Many of them have been integrated into FileMaker Pro (and now Claris Pro) though Web Viewers.

Spreadsheet.js (https://spreadsheet.js.org/)
SheetJS (https://sheetjs.com/)
CloudTables (https://datatables.net/examples/data_sources/js_array.html)
npm, Datatables plug-in for jQuery (https://www.npmjs.com/package/datatables)
AppML Brings Data to HTML (https://www.w3schools.com/appml/default.asp)
more when you start searching!

But they all look like coding down and dirty. That’s great if that’s what you want to do. Would you like something easier? Would you like to send this data to the other Claris Studio view types, including dashboards (charting)? And would you like to share the data collected with Claris Pro? Let’s get started with the finer points of spreadsheets in Claris Studio! Continue reading “Claris Studio (part 3) – Spreadsheet: Details, please!” →

Beverly Voth, Claris Platform, Claris Pro, Claris Studio, Level: Intermediate

Claris Studio (part 2) – Integration with Claris Pro

October 12, 2022October 15, 2022 beverlyvoth

About the author: Beverly Voth has been in the Claris FileMaker community many years. In addition to FileMaker Pro & its integrated products, she is a Full Stack Web developer & SQL database administrator. The only recipient of the FileMaker Excellence Award for Outstanding Contribution to the FileMaker Web Publishing Community (DevCon 2003), she’s been advocating Claris FileMaker and web since they could work together.

Welcome back to part two of our Claris Studio & Claris Pro exploration. This article will cover Claris Pro and how it integrates with Claris Studio. Since we started with Claris Studio, Tell Me More!, there was a major update to the features in Claris Studio. You were advised to be alert! Check What’s New for the latest Claris Studio updates. This article is about conversion of Claris FileMaker Pro database files to Claris Pro files and how Claris Pro works with Claris Studio tables (two way interaction!)

What is Claris Pro?

Claris Pro is an application toolbox full of features that allow you to create user interfaces for data collection, display, and reporting. It can be used to create everything from a collection of Grandma’s recipes to full mission-critical business applications. It’s a cool and R.A.D. (pun intended!) toolbox for use by those starting out to full-stack relational database developers. Claris Pro uses a graphical interface for most creation, but easily works with external data exchanges. Once created with Claris Pro, these apps can be used on iPhones, iPads, or viewed in web browsers, as well as on the desktop/laptop by one user or thousands of users. You can use Claris Pro with Windows and macOS. Continue reading “Claris Studio (part 2) – Integration with Claris Pro” →

Introduction

Eliminate Duplicates (Old Method)

Introduction

Introduction

Claris Studio, Spreadsheet View

What is Claris Pro?

What is Claris Studio?