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 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” →

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

JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2

September 18, 2022July 16, 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, part 3

Demo Files

Note: some of the CFs have been revised and/or renamed since part 1, so if you plan to use these CFs, make sure to download today’s “part 2” file. Continue reading “JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2” →

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

JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 1

August 14, 2022June 25, 2023 Kevin Frank

This article is part of a series. See also…
• JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2
• JSON Custom Functions for FM, part 3

Demo File

JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5.zip

Introduction

Today we have some custom functions (CFs) that can help you accomplish various JSON-related tasks in FileMaker. Back in 2018 I had this to say about JSON custom functions…

My inclination is to really understand something before I use a custom function to simplify things, but that’s a matter of personal choice… and one which can vary depending on the situation.

And four years later I find myself using JSON custom functions on a daily basis, to save time and to boost productivity — for example, to merge two objects into a single object, or to deduplicate an array. Continue reading “JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 1” →

Level: Intermediate

Sometimes Less Is More Reliable

August 10, 2022August 10, 2022 Kevin Frank

Update: Make sure to read Tony White’s comment below. It contains important additional information re: the behavior described in this article.

Recently I noticed some code that had worked flawlessly for years was suddenly returning “?” instead of valid values. What it came down to was that I had renamed my file from “JSON Custom Functions” to “JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5”

Well you know those functions like ValueListItems…

ValueListItems ( fileName ; valueListName )

…that have a fileName argument? The culprit turned out to be that I was using Get(FileName) for that argument, and I needed to instead use "".

All 21 of the design functions are vulnerable to this, ahem, behavior. From the online help —

If you specify a filename that contains a period, include the filename extension in the parameter. Otherwise, functions may interpret the period in the filename as the beginning of the filename extension, which can lead to unexpected results.
If you specify no filename (""), functions return results for the current file.

Source: https://help.claris.com/en/pro-help/content/design-functions.html

Bottom line: When using a design function and referencing the current file, use "" instead of Get(FileName). There’s no down side, and your code won’t break if you decide to add a period to the file name.

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

Thinking About JSON, part 4

July 31, 2022August 14, 2022 Kevin Frank

This article is part of a series. See also…
• Thinking About JSON, part 1
• Thinking About JSON, part 2
• Thinking About JSON, part 3

Demo Files

Make sure to download the correct version for your locale:

json.getvaluetype – decimal dot, v5
(decimal separator is a dot; thousands separator is a comma)
json.getvaluetype – decimal comma, v5
(decimal separator is a comma; thousands separator is a dot)

Introduction

Welcome back to the fourth installment in this ongoing series. It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since the last segment, but in the meantime some exciting developments have occurred at the intersection of FileMaker and JSON, including… Continue reading “Thinking About JSON, part 4” →

Level: Intermediate

Button Bar Segment Fun, part 2

June 2, 2022June 6, 2022 Kevin Frank

This is a quick follow up to Tuesday’s article, and to avoid unnecessary repetition I will assume the reader is familiar with that material.

Demo Files

button bar segment fun, v3 (from part 1)
button bar segment fun, v4

There were some things in v3 I wasn’t completely happy about, and I realized this morning that they would be easy to fix, and that the act of fixing them would help demonstrate the power of using this approach in the first place. Continue reading “Button Bar Segment Fun, part 2” →

JSON, Level: Advanced, Version: FM 18 or later

Button Bar Segment Fun

May 31, 2022June 2, 2022 Kevin Frank

Demo Files

Today we’re going to look at some ways single-segment button bars (SSBBs) can help produce dynamic column headings for list views and/or reports, with a goal of concentrating logic into the segment calculation and reducing schema dependencies elsewhere. This is a work in progress, rather than a finished, battle-hardened methodology. The aim is to explore possibilities and stimulate discussion.

Note: the demo files are built on top of an “empty” virtual list table. The point is not to (once again) dive into virtual list or clickable/sortable column headings, but to provide a list view we can pretend contains valid entries, while we focus on what’s going on in the layout header part.

Disclaimer: these techniques are in the proof-of-concept stage. As with all techniques on this (and any other) site, use with a healthy dose of common sense and at your own risk.

Continue reading “Button Bar Segment Fun” →

ExecuteSQL, Level: Advanced, SQL, Version: FM 18 or later

Exploring Wordlespace with SQL and While

April 4, 2022April 13, 2022 Kevin Frank

Recently we’ve discussed optimizing SQL queries in FileMaker, and had some fun with various SQL experiments. Today we’re going to explore some ways FileMaker can use ExecuteSQL and the While function to perform letter frequency and text pattern analysis on candidate words for the popular Wordle game.

The list of words comes from https://github.com/tabatkins/wordle-list and purports to include the actual answer words, as well as all allowable guess words. I don’t know how valid this list of words actually is, or, assuming it is currently valid, whether it is carved in stone or will change at some point in the future.

Demo file: SQL-Multi-Table-Experimentation-Wordle.zip

Some Notes

Today’s file is functionally identical to the one from last time; if you already have it, there’s no need to download this one.
No attempt is made to differentiate between daily Wordle words that have already appeared vs. those that have yet to appear.
SQL is case-sensitive in the WHERE clause; all our examples today use lower case letters so we may safely ignore the issue for the duration of this article.
For a general-purpose introduction to SQL in FileMaker, see Beverly Voth’s Missing FM 12 ExecuteSQL Reference.

Continue reading “Exploring Wordlespace with SQL and While” →

Claris Studio, Spreadsheet View

What is Claris Pro?

What is Claris Studio?

Demo Files

Demo File

Introduction

Demo Files

Introduction

Demo Files

Demo Files

Some Notes