Introduction
If you work with large JSON structures in FileMaker, you may be aware that the current shipping version of the product (FileMaker Pro 21, a.k.a. FileMaker Pro 2024) has a single-element JSON cache, which is reset whenever JSONSetElement or JSONGetElement is called, and that you can boost performance by taking this into account.
Six months ago Josh Halpern was kind enough draw my attention to this in a comment on one of my articles, and added…
“If you’re interested, I wrote a couple more points about how the JSON cache behaves here: https://the.fmsoup.org/t/performance-core-principles-10-scripting/1867/25?u=jwilling. But the gist is… only touch one json at a time.”
[The above is required reading as far as I’m concerned, and has changed the way I work with JSON.]
More recently I was discussing JSON caching with Steve Senft-Herrera, and he shared a couple additional optimization ideas that had not occurred to me, and that I am definitely adding to my tool kit. (Thank you Steve.)
At any rate, today we’re going to take a look at applying all three of these ideas to speed up processing of large JSON structures within a While statement, and you can follow along in today’s demo file if you are so inclined.
Demo file: fm-21-json-optimization.zip (requires FM 21 or later)
Continue reading “JSON Optimization in FM 21”
