Interview with Steve Senft-Herrera
[30 Nov 2021: Custom function and demo file have been updated. Some of the screen shots and example numbers referenced here in part 1 will deviate slightly from what you will find in the updated demo.]
Demo file: CF_JSONQuery_20211130_0120_PUBLIC.fmp12.zip
KF: Good afternoon, Steve. You’ve been developing JSONQuery over the last few years, and today I have the honor of presenting and discussing it here with you on FileMaker Hacks. I was wondering if you could start out with a brief description of what JSONQuery is?
SSH: Sure. JSONQuery is a custom function, and it operates on JSON. Typically you’re going to be feeding it a large JSON array you’ve received back from the FileMaker Data API, or somebody else’s API, where each record is a JSON object within a larger parent JSON array, and the purpose of this function is to be able to find child elements in that parent array that match certain criteria and return just those elements to you.
Above and beyond that it has a lot of bells and whistles, some of which I’m sure we’ll cover, but the main impetus for writing it was giving you an easy and fast way to essentially query a JSON array.
For example, let’s say you have an array filled with a lot of orders, but you only need to get the order items that are being shipped to a certain city, or to a certain state, then this function would allow you to easily obtain those elements in an efficient manner. Continue reading “JSONQuery, part 1” →
