FileMaker Pro 11: Advanced Tutorials
Back Button / Storing Layouts
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Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 11: Advanced / Back Button / Storing Layouts)
The first step to creating a Back Button is creating a script that stores each layout we visit. For example, if you switch from Form to Notes, we need to store that we were just at Form and if we switch from Notes to List, we need to store the Notes Layout in addition to the form so we need to store it in some kind of list in and a return-separated list is the best because it's really easy to parse the data with the value function. So that's how we're going to do that. We're going to start with writing this portion of the script, which will be storing the results of our history of, you know, going through the database. So we'll go into Manage Scripts and we'll make a new script. We'll call it Back Store. Now, we're not going to start with our Standard Perform Script Allow User Abort and Perform Script Set Error Capture because this is going to be a Subscript of other scripts and those will all have that feature on it and it will flow through, that Allow User Abort and Set Error Capture will flow through all the Subscripts. So we're just going to go with our Set Variable. Now, you can also use a Global Field here in Set Field if you want but definitely use a variable if you can because it's going to be much faster. You know, it's, you don't have to clutter up Manage Database with it. And we're going to have use a double dollar sign here because we need this to persist beyond the script. So we're going to use the double dollar sign so it doesn't go away after the script is gone. We're going to just simply call this dollar sign dollar sign Back and then our formula's pretty simple. We're going to use Get Layout Number. Now, we could have used Get Layout Name but Get Layout Number stores less information and it really gets the same results in this situation. Then we're going to concatenate this with a Pilcrow character as well as whatever's in dollar sign dollar sign Back. Now, the order of this is extremely important. You want each new layout number to go at the top of the stack or the return-separated list rather than at the end. That's just the way I'm designing it. I'm sure you could design it the other way around but you'll find out it's much easier to get it off the top of the stack in my opinion. And then what we want to do is prevent that extra return that happens when we first, you know, navigate; when we just open it up and this is blank and we don't want to have a return and then the value. We want to have a true return-separated list so we've shown you a couple ways with left words how to get rid of that return. We've also showed you with the Length Function and Left Function. We're going to show you another way. I think it works out pretty well here. We're going to put a case statement in here and say Not Is Empty and we'll say dollar sign dollar sign Back close paren semicolon. So if there's something in dollar sign dollar sign Back, then use the return. Otherwise use the Null or the default result of the case statement. So that's it. That's your whole formula. It's not very complex. Don't need anything else so we'll save that and we'll take this off and move it up into our navigation area. Let's see if we can find that real quick. Put it right in there. Duplicate this and move it up into the right spot. There we go. That looks pretty good and now we need to go to all the places where we navigate. All of, you can see this behind here, every time we switch from Form to List and Notes or use the Menu Button or the Custom Menus to navigate around, we need to store this. I'm not going to store it when you hit the Find Button or when you print and things like that. That seems unnecessary; just the typical navigation. So we have to go to all those places and we can start with our Menu Button. We'll open it up and what we're going to do is put in a Perform Script here. We want it before we go to that layout so we can store the layout we're on and then go to the new layout. So we'll say Perform the Back Store and then we'll copy that. If you have FileMaker Advanced you can copy that and we'll just paste this in all the places where we need it. Now, we don't need it here because this is printing daily invoices so we're not going to store that in our Back, you know, scenario. So we'll save this and then we need to go to all our Go To Layouts that we use for our List View, our Form View, Invoices, Customers. These are all for the Custom Menus. We need to make sure all these are done so we're just going to come in here and we're going to get in here and paste. So we'll paste that in there, put it at the top, save it and close it. Paste it in there, move it to the top. I'm using the keyboard command to save it and then the keyboard command to close it because this is much faster and you do this so much, it's really a good idea to get those keyboard commands down. So save it, close it, paste, save and close, paste, move it to the top, save and close and did I get this one at the top? Yup, I did. Good. And then the last one. We'll paste this in there, save and close and then we're going to need one more so let's duplicate this one right here. We'll call this one Go to Layout Notes because remember we had that Notes Layout and it doesn't have any script on it already so we'll have to make one. And we'll change that to Go to Layout, move to Customers Notes, there we go, click OK and so what we need to do is go on to all the layouts that call Notes and add that in there or it's already got a script step but we need the Perform Script so we'll change that real quick. There we go and it's probably going to be easier to find it with Go to. There we go. Close that, go to the next set of layouts, Perform Script, cursor up there, Go to Notes and then we'll go to the next layout. That one doesn't need it because we're already on Notes. There we go. And then this last one, double click on it, Perform Script, type in Go, Go to Layout Notes and if you've noticed, I've renamed all of my Standard Go to Layouts. Some of them were called Invoices Layout and Customers Layout. I named them all Go to Layout just for consistency if you're just noticing that. So there we go. We got that all done. Now let's test it out. We'll go into Browse Mode and I'll tighten that up. There we go. I think I'll turn on the Data Viewer here real quick so we can see what's going on, make it a little bit smaller. There we go and you'll see as soon as we go to Notes, then it'll put a value in there and then we got to List, it puts a second value in there. And if you double click on it, you'll see it's a return-separated list. So now we're adding these up as we go through them and so what we're going to do in the next section is show you how to create that Back Button, how to parse off the most-recent value and go back to it.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | FileMaker Pro 11: Advanced |
| Author: | John Mark Osborne |
| SKU: | 34140 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-36-4 |
| Release Date: | 2010-07-09 |
| Duration: | 14.5 hrs / 159 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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