[Note: several hours after posting this article I realized the “Hide Object” calc could be streamlined. Screen shot and demo have been updated to reflect this.]
Demo file: virtual-portal-v2b.zip (requires FM 18 or later)
This is a quick follow up to the Virtual Portal article I posted the other day. As you may recall, the objective was to use virtual list to display disparate entities in a portal…
…via an array like this…
Demo file: virtual-portal-v1b.zip
This is a follow-up to last month’s article on virtual list, and this time we’re going to explore a way to use virtual list in a portal.
Imagine you have built a system where a Company can be a parent of a Mill, Refinery, Estate, or another Company.
Each of these entities exists as a separate table in your database…
…and from the perspective of a Company record, you’d like to be able to see all immediate children. Continue reading “Virtual Portal” →
Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk.
This is a quick follow-up to last month’s article on 2-Column Magic Value Lists, and, to avoid repetition, will assume the reader is familiar with that material. A colleague pointed out that it might be helpful to offer some real-world applications of this somewhat esoteric technique, and today we have two demos based on last month’s demo #2, but this time actually doing something useful.
Disclaimer: the techniques shown in this article are provided on an as-is basis. Use with appropriate caution and at your own risk.
Acknowledgements: today’s article would not have been written without the inspiration provided by Bruce Robertson, John Ahn (FM 12 ExecuteSQL Unconference Session), Andries Heylen (Magic Value Lists), Marcelo Piñeyro (How to Extend FileMaker Value List Sort Capabilities) and Jonathan Fletcher (It’s Sorta A Value List Thing).
Last year, in Custom Field-Based Value Lists, we looked at a technique to enable single-column field-based value lists to display their contents in entry order, as opposed to standard index-based alphanumeric order. For example using the contents of this field (from a single-record table) as the basis for a value list…
…we came up with a way to sort our value list (a.k.a. “VL”) items like so…
…as opposed to what you would get with a standard field-based VL, i.e., this:
I ended the article by saying…
Today’s article looked at value lists based on return-separated values in a single field. In an upcoming article we’ll explore implementing a similar technique for sorted two-column value lists based on entries in a dedicated value lists table where each list item lives in its own record.
…and now, nineteen months later, am ready to pick up where we left off last time, and to avoid repetition, will assume the reader is at least somewhat familiar with the issues and techniques covered in that article (Custom Field-Based Value Lists).
Note: if you aren’t clear on why a 2-column value list might be preferable to its single-column counterpart (or to a custom value list for that matter), check out Thinking About Value Lists, part 1.
Recently I received an email wondering…
When printing a multipage report sorted by a sub-summary, is there a way to display the sub-summary heading on the following page when it breaks across two or more pages?
There are various approaches one might take, and I actually buried one of those approaches inside an article + demo file posted on this site back in 2013 (PDF Catalog with Table of Contents). At the time we didn’t have “Hide Object” so I used conditional formatting in conjunction with a special-purpose “helper field” to flexibly display the conditional heading.
Well today we’re going look at an approach that doesn’t require a helper field, and you are welcome to follow along in this demo file if you are so inclined: conditional-summary-report-header.zip
This is a quick follow up to last week’s article on reciprocal (bi-directional) linking, and will assume the reader is familiar with that material. Paul Jansen of APJ Computing Solutions sent in a revision of one of my files demonstrating that, among other things, the graph could be a good deal leaner (as per my stated goal of making the approach as simple and lightweight as possible), and I am sharing that file today with his permission, along with my own attempt at further simplification.
Challenge: in a multiuser document management system, facilitate the linking (and unlinking) of any document with any other. Make it clear which documents are linked to the current document, and make sure the approach is multiuser friendly — in other words, allow document records to be linked and unlinked even if one or both of those document records are currently being edited by another user.
Today we have two demo files, one using standard serial numbers and one using UUIDs. Except for serials vs. UUIDs, the two files are functionally identical, and in the interest of clarity, I’m going to focus primarily on the serial number version.
Demo files: reciprocal linkage & reciprocal linkage with uuids Continue reading “Reciprocal Linkage” →
