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

Claris Studio (part 2) – Integration with Claris Pro

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” →

Beverly Voth, Claris Platform, Claris Studio

Claris Studio, Tell Me More!

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.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring portions of the new Claris Platform. Launched in September 2022, this is just the beginning of the journey! Curious souls that we are, many question arise, and these articles are meant to supplement what we’ve seen so far, and perhaps give some different perspectives, along with plenty of screen shots. Concentration in these articles will be on Claris Studio and its relationship with Claris Pro.

Disclaimer: This platform may have rapid changes and this article may not be current after it is published. Always check for the latest information & videos.

What is Claris Studio?

Claris Studio is a cloud-based (access through a web browser) editor and data browser. A Claris ID is used to login and teams can be invited to join (by Claris ID). Access to view or edit can be constrained by inviting team members to Hubs with shared Views. The editor can create: Forms, Spreadsheets (tables), List-Detail Views, Dashboards (with charts and summary data), and Kanban Views. Some basic Views are preset for you to use as examples when you first start. There are many tooltip hints and popover & other dialogs to assist you along the way.

Continue reading “Claris Studio, Tell Me More!” →

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

JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 2

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

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

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.

Note: where appropriate, some of today’s custom functions utilize bracket notation to avoid unexpected results when and if key names contain wonky characters such as dots, brackets or braces. You can read more about bracket notation in Thinking About JSON, part 4.

And with that said, let’s move on to… Continue reading “JSON Custom Functions for FM 19.5, part 1” →

Level: Intermediate

Sometimes Less Is More Reliable

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

JSON.GetValueType

Kevin Frank

Demo Files

Make sure to download the correct version for your locale:

Disclaimer

This is a work-in-progress that I am sharing freely with the developer community. It has been under development for the last month, and I will likely revise it in the future. It may contain bugs or not behave the way you think it should. Use at your own risk, and with a healthy dose of skepticism and common sense. And, needless to say, treat it as a starting point and modify it as you see fit. Continue reading “JSON.GetValueType” →

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

Thinking About JSON, part 4

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

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

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

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

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

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” →