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Level: Advanced, Version: FM 13 or later, Virtual List

Virtual List Reporting, part 1

Kevin Frank

Self-plagiarism alert: to avoid repeatedly referring the reader back to earlier virtual list articles, portions of text from those earlier articles are incorporated here.

Welcome to the first installment of a multi-part series on producing reports using the virtual list technique, or more properly, collection of techniques. Demo file: VLR-part-1.zip

demo

Invented and popularized by Bruce Robertson, virtual lists are incredibly flexible, and have made a number of appearances here in the past, including… Continue reading “Virtual List Reporting, part 1” →

Level: Advanced, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

Set Variable by Name

Kevin Frank

28 Dec 2020: for further thoughts on this subject see Set Variable By Name Revisited.

29 July 2017: custom function updated to simplify the clearing of existing vars.

16 April 2017: custom function has been updated to auto-interpret dates (rather than treating them as sequential division problems)… e.g., to recognize “4/16/2017” as a date, as opposed to “4 ÷16 ÷ 2017”.

Recently, in the midst of various reporting and charting projects, I’ve found myself wishing for an easy way to “dynamically instantiate” one or more variables… in other words, set them by name, with the name determined programmatically, as opposed to being hard coded.

This issue has come up from time to time on this blog over the last five years or so, most notably in Dynamic Variable Instantiation, where I observed that…

2016-04-06_074440

…and then proposed an unwieldy mass of gobbledygook as a workaround, e.g.,

2016-04-06_083324

Actually, the preceding isn’t too bad for occasional use, especially if the value you’re passing to the variable is as simple as the GetSummary string shown above. Continue reading “Set Variable by Name” →

ExecuteSQL, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 13 or later

Fast Summaries Revisited

Kevin Frank

Update 30 May 2018: see also Fast Summaries Re-revisited.

If you do complex data analysis, then from time to time you probably need to group, summarize, and parse data into variables and/or fields. There are various ways to accomplish this, including the Fast Summary technique, which regular readers of this blog may be familiar with, as it has made a number of appearances here over the years.

Well today we’re going to look at a couple alternatives to Fast Summaries, with the help of some demo files, which you can use to do your own benchmarking.

2016-03-29_223920

Or, if you’d rather not do your own benchmarking, scroll down to see results from my tests. Bottom line: each of these three techniques can be fastest, depending on circumstances.

(Also, if you’ve been putting off exploring Perform Script On Server, a.k.a. PSOS, host the demo files on FileMaker Server 13 or later. The reporting routine optionally uses PSOS, so you can dive in painlessly and see what you’ve been missing.) Continue reading “Fast Summaries Revisited” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

PDF Trickery

Kevin Frank

If you produce reports or other FileMaker output in PDF format, here’s a little trick that can be a real time saver in terms of development.

Imagine this: a client receives a nightly report via email in PDF format, and asks you to make sure it will fit on a single page in landscape orientation. The report always contains three groups of 12 records, with each group preceded by a leading subsummary, a latticework of horizontal and vertical gridlines, etc.

It is a busy, crowded report, but with patience and fine tuning, you manage to get everything to fit on a single page. Just. Barely.

Now the client wants you to add a trailing sub-summary to each group, but of course still expects everything to fit on a single page. The report is already at 8pt type, with tight vertical margins, and you are not looking forward to a bunch of time-consuming heroic measures to accommodate this request, so instead you employ the following trick. Continue reading “PDF Trickery” →

Level: Intermediate

Obscure Multiple Window Issue

Kevin Frank

Note: Thank you to Colleen Hammersley for bringing this issue to my attention, and to Howard Schlossberg for proposing a clever and elegant work around that addresses the issue on the Windows platform. (We’ll also look at another fix that works cross-platform.)

Today we’re going to explore a windowing behavior change that was introduced in FileMaker 12. If your solutions display multiple on-screen windows, then you may at some point find yourself facing this issue.

2016-01-31_16-47-32

The problem manifests in different ways on the Windows vs. Mac platforms; we’re going to start out by looking at what happens in FMP/Win via the Window Focus, v1 demo.

Continue reading “Obscure Multiple Window Issue” →

Level: Intermediate

Tips ’n’ Tricks, part 2

Kevin Frank

Welcome back for a second dip into the developer bag of tips and tricks. A few of today’s entries assume familiarity with part 1, so if you haven’t already checked it out, I invite you to do so before proceeding.

We begin today with a couple ExecuteSQL tips.

Tip #1: Get to know COALESCE

The SQL Coalesce function takes a series of arguments and returns the first non-null result, like so:

COALESCE ( arg1 ; arg2 [; arg3 ; etc.] )

For example, given a table of customer data including these records…

2015-12-23_9-44-36 Continue reading “Tips ’n’ Tricks, part 2” →

ExecuteSQL, Level: Any, SQL, Version: FM 13 or later

Tips ’n’ Tricks, part 1

Kevin Frank

Over the last few years I’ve been collecting miscellaneous tips and tricks with the thought of eventually aggregating them into a blog posting, and it appears that day has finally come. Ideally there will be something new and useful here for developers of all levels, from the neophyte to the most grizzled of FileMaker veterans.

We start off with a couple FM 14-specific tips.

Tip #1: Tool tips in layout mode

In layout mode in FileMaker 14 you can hover your mouse over any badge and an informative tool tip will display.

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Tip #2: Shift-Return in the Script Workspace

Did you know you can add new line above the current line in the Script Workspace by pressing Shift-Return? It works with the standard Return key, as well as the numeric Enter key.

2015-11-30_14-08-17
Before… line 1 is active, and the user is about to press Shift-Return
After... a new top line has been added
After… a new top line has been added, and existing entries have moved down to accommodate

Continue reading “Tips ’n’ Tricks, part 1” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 13 or later

Multi-State Dynamic Graphic Buttons

Kevin Frank

I had a client request recently to toggle an image button to a second image on mouse over. Under normal circumstances, this would not be difficult to accomplish since you can assign one image to the Normal state, and a different image to the Hover state, like so.

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However, if you go this route, you can’t use container fields as the source for the images, but instead must make static file selections, like so:

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Since this button would be appearing on dozens of layouts throughout a 20+ file solution, the client wanted to be able to store the two images in container fields, so an authorized user could easily swap in new container images (in browse mode, not layout mode) and have the changes ripple through their entire solution.

2015-10-25_15-23-05

Demo Files:

Continue reading “Multi-State Dynamic Graphic Buttons” →

ExecuteSQL, Level: Intermediate, SQL, Summary List, Version: FM 13 or later

Found Set Awareness Revisited

Kevin Frank

Recently a colleague contacted me with some questions about making ExecuteSQL found-set aware, and I realized that while I had addressed aspects of the problem in various blog postings over a multiyear period (for example, here and here), I had not assembled my thoughts into one cohesive, up-to-date article.

Well, that shortcoming has now been addressed, and today we’re going to look at three demo files, all of which rely on the summary list field type (introduced in FM 13).

9-20-2015 8-52-01 AM Continue reading “Found Set Awareness Revisited” →

Beverly Voth, Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 13 or later

FileMaker UI Tricks: Dual-Purpose Layout

beverlyvoth

Editor’s note: Today it’s my honor and privilege to present an article by guest author Beverly Voth, whose contributions to the FileMaker community are numerous and much appreciated. It’s great to have her back here on FileMaker Hacks.

FileMaker 13 & 14 have some features that can be leveraged to allow one layout to toggle between Form View & Table View and look differently! We will be using the Starter Solution, “Contacts”. Feel free to download the demo file (Contacts14.fmp12.zip) or you may start with a fresh copy of the database file or another Starter Solution and follow the steps below.

NEW to Starter Solutions? Select “New From Starter Solution” under the File menu. Click the “Contacts” icon and click on the “Choose” button. A dialog will come up with the “Save As” field filled in with the name of the database file you chose. Navigate to where you wish to save the file and click the “Save” button. This will open the file to the default layout and be ready to change.

The default layout for Contacts is “Contact Details”, is in Form View and shows two “tab-like” buttons called: Contact List & Contact Details. These are buttons that Switch you to different layouts. Notice how the placement is the same and there is a smooth transition between the two layouts. You may also notice that the view is “locked” to just allow View as List or View as Form (respectively). You cannot select other views on these two layouts.

CONTACTS_details_tab

CONTACTS_list_tab

Continue reading “FileMaker UI Tricks: Dual-Purpose Layout” →