FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner Tutorials
Introduction / New FileMaker 12 Functions
Subtitles of the Movie (FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner / Introduction / New FileMaker 12 Functions)
Quite a few New Functions have been added to FileMaker Pro 12, some are more useful than others but each function serves a purpose for some job or some person. Now I'm going to spend more time on what I think are the more useful or more important functions that have been added to FileMaker Pro 12, but don't let that stop you from trying some of the ones I briefly cover. They maybe very important to you. Now we're going to use this example file called SCRIPTS underscore CALCS, you'll find it inside the Work Files whether you downloaded from the VTC website or find it on the root directory of your CD. You can take a look at everything I've done here and see all the functions and everything and again remember they're not very complicated functions, we're just giving you a brief overview here. So don't get excited, it's not going to show you anything wild and crazy you can do with these functions but I want to introduce you to them and you know plant the seed and get your mind thinking about how these work. Now we're going to use this in two different sections, we'll use it in this section which is going to basically cover the stuff over here and then in another section which covers scripts which will cover how Calculation Functions work with scripts and you know how scripts work and things like that. So we kind of combined them into one file here. So let's start with the functions here but we will cover a couple of scripts down here that really demonstrate how that, those functions work. So the first one is GetHeight and really goes along with GetWidth, they simply allow you to reference a Container Field, I referenced this one over here and it gives you the height in pixels and the width in pixels of the original content. So if you go into Layout Mode and say reduce the size of this, crop it or make it bigger whatever, it's going to give you the original contents size, not what FileMaker has changed it to. And then right below it we have the Thumbnail, you can see this one's smaller here because it allows you to get a thumbnail of a Container Field and it's, in this case, this one right here. Let's take a look at what I've done with this because I've combined GetHeight and GetWidth with GetThumbnail to do something pretty cool. Go into Manage Database, here's our GetHeight, simple calculation that's unstored, just says GetHeight and refers to the Container Field and here's the Container Field that you saw over there on the left. Then we have GetWidth, same idea just refer to the Container Field and both of these are unstored, that doesn't mean that's the only way you can use it but this is a real brief example of how to use it. You can use these functions inside a script and we'll Auto Enter, anywhere you want. Now here is the GetThumbnail, it's a little more complicated so let's go into Options and you'll see that GetThumbnail has three parameters, let's take a look at that. Here's the New Container Functions, you can see all of them here, it has three parameters, the Source or the Container Field, the width that you want it to be and the height. So I've referred to the Container Field then I've referred to the GetWidth Function, that's the function we showed you just earlier and the GetHeight Function and divided them by 3. So now I have a thumbnail that's one third the size, very easy to do, you can combine these functions and make some cool things happen. Now right below it is the VerifyContainer, now this goes a long with the Enhanced Container Fields and specifically the Remote Feature where you can store your references to your files or your pictures whatever it might be on the FileMaker Server. It makes life much easier but we're going to go over that in more depth later, right now I just want to make sure it's understand it's about that New Remote Feature. And what happens is, maybe that file or that picture has been moved or deleted or who knows what happened to it, this will allow you to verify whether it's there or not and it will return. You can see it's got a question mark right now because I'm not using that Remote Feature; it's just a regular Container Field so it can't give us any kind of status. Right below it we have Installed FileMaker Plug-ins, it's a cool function to tell what plug-ins are installed right now, that's on the local machine, not on the server, on the local machine. And you can see I have two, Web Publishing and the Data Access Companion. Now there are some other values here but first notice that their Return separated and then between each one of the values for the two plug-ins I have. You have three parameters, the name, the version and whether it's enabled or disabled. Again the name, the version and enabled or disabled so you can parse this data out maybe in an open script or something like that and see what functions, you know, check to see, maybe use a Pattern Count to see if a particular function is installed and then maybe check the version you have installed and do some things based on that. Right below it we have the PersistentID; this uniquely identifies the machine that you're on right now. So you might be on an iPad or an iPhone or a Windows machine or a Macintosh machine. This will identify that machine, think of it along the lines as account names and user names. Account names identify who's logged on regardless of the computer. A username identifies the computer but only so far as what they've entered on that computer because that can change, this file you will never change so it uniquely identifies that machine so you might Auto Enter this just like you might Auto Enter GetAccountName and get a modification account and get Timestamp and things like that just to identify you know what's happened to that record because it can really help you down the line. And say oh well it was on this machine that it happened, well okay we know that it was this person that was using the machine at that time and then you can find out what happened to the record and talk to them and see what goes on. Right below you have UUID, now this uniquely identifies a record, well let me put it a different way, it allows you to create a Unique Identifier. So if we show the Status Toolbar and go to Record One, you'll see it has a different value but if I come back to Record Two, it's now got a different value. I go back to Record One, it has a different value, that's because it's an unstored calculation that keeps updating. So this would probably be better used as some type of Auto Enter and you might use it in a case you have synchronization going on, maybe you have an iPad or an iPhone or a laptop that doesn't have any WiFi or 3G connection to your main database on your server. You want to create an Unique Identifier for that record but a serial number won't do it because you could have ten salespeople out there all generating serial numbers and they might overlap. This will allow you to create a unique value that you can then use for your related records so you can connect everything and then it will synchronize perfectly with your main database when that salesperson comes back in and says here's all the work I've done. Here's the WindowStyle, now we're going to run a script to demonstrate this because right now it's showing you it has a zero, that's because, there, this is the standard FileMaker Window you're used to. There are two New Window Styles, so if I click on this Button right here, it's going to open up a new window with a Floating Palette essentially. You notice that I can come back here and click into here and start working on this record even though this one's still on top. So that can be handy for maybe some type of menu or something like that where you always want it to be on top, wherever they put it. It could be over here, it could be off to the side, who knows where that window may be. So we'll go ahead and get rid of this one and close it and then this one right here is a dialog. You can't click, you got, until you dismiss this window, it's, it's, it's a dialog, it's mootle, there's nothing you can do about it. And you notice it has a Windows Style of two and I, I kind of breezed over that, let me show you again on this first button. That's a Window Style of one, so this allows you to identify what type of window you have open to determine what you want to do. There's a variety of things you can do and we'll get more into that script on how you work this and see how that actual script works when we cover the next section. And then what you have here is your ConnectionState, this is a function called GetConnectionState and it simply tells you whether you have secure connection to your server or not. Whether you're using SSL or not and there's a variety of different states and you can look that up in Help. It's really not difficult to find and you know, I'm not sure how useful it is but if you're really concerned about your security, then you might want to check it before you send something back to the server, before you commit a record or something like that. You might, you know, have a script that says, hey don't let him commit this record or add this record unless the Connection State is secure.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | FileMaker Pro 12: Beginner |
| Author: | John Mark Osborne |
| SKU: | 34323 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-61866-046-6 |
| Release Date: | 2012-06-08 |
| Duration: | 16 hrs / 169 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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