Tag: custom function

FileMaker Custom Function for File Path to @Dropbox

FileMaker Pro

From the second version of my first database (back in 2002) I have used my FileMaker databases to control the creation of a structured folder system to enable the efficient and uniform storing of structured data for each of the businesses I have worked with.

Early on in my development of FileMaker systems I stumbled across the fantastic plugins offered by Troi Automatisering, in particular their File Plugin, now at version 5, which I will be creating this custom function to use.

This plugin enables me to create, with relative ease, a series of fields and scripts that allowed the automatic creation and opening of folders and files straight from the database. Relatively simple if you’re running FileMaker in a closed network, but it starts to get more complicated very quickly.

I’ve had the good fortune to design almost exclusively for Mac only networks (phew) although I have had to deal with mixed environments where my customers are still in transition from PCs to Macs so I’ve had to ensure that any system is compatible with both.

The Preparation

Determining the Windows System Version:

Since the route to the Documents folder hasn’t ever changed in Mac OS X I don’t need to worry about the version used, however, this is not the case in Windows where there is a different file path to the “My Documents” folder on Windows XP and the new versions Vista and Windows 7.

So I need to use the Get ( SystemVersion ) Function to determine whether or not the user is using Windows XP or a newer version. According to the FileMaker help the function returns the following information for Windows:

5.1 for Windows XP SP2

6.0 for Windows Vista

So I needed a test for which version of Windows is running. I did attempt to design my own custom function to determine this, but perhaps because I was unwell I wasted a good deal of time messing around with this before I came to my senses and looked at Matt’s github page.

His os.versionName custom function (which I’ve renamed as os.versions) is a quick and easy solution to this problem, which can go well beyond my needs, but will achieve what I want by returning the name of the Mac or Windows OS running on the users system.

It returns a simple easy to interpret name from the Get ( SystemVersion ) so the 5.1 response from the function is returned as “Windows XP” or 6.0 is returned as “Windows Vista”.

Dealing with Windows Folder Path Separators:

Windows file paths use the “\” separator. For some reason you can’t easily use these in FileMaker calculations (if someone knows why please let me know in the comments). So I’ve taken the easy step of creation of new global variable $$windowsnetworksymbol to contain the “\” separator.

n.b. To ensure this variable is set each time the FileMaker file is launched I’ve added it to a script called “Set Global Variables”, which I run as part of my start-up script.

Dealing with Mac Folder Path Separators

Mac file paths used by the plugin are formatted with the “:” separator. The only other thing you need to worry about is that a file path starts without any separator.

Get (DocumentsPath) Function

It is the product of this function that we have been working towards editing. The basic idea is to be able to call the Get ( DocumentsPath ) Function and then edit it’s product to point instead to the location of the Dropbox folder (assuming it is installed in the default location).

The Get ( DocumentsPath ) Function will return the following:

\C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\My Documents\ in Windows XP

\C:\Users\Your User Name\Documents\ in Vista or Windows 7

And we know from my earlier blog post: Default @Dropbox File Paths that the default file paths for Dropbox are:

\C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\My Documents\My Dropbox\ in Windows XP

\C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\Dropbox\ in Vista or Windows 7

/Macintosh HD/Users/YourUserName/Dropbox/ in Mac OS X

So now we have all the building blocks in place it’s time to construct our custom function:

The path.dropbox Function

The function itself is relatively simple once we have done the above preparation. It has no parameters and is made up of a simple Case Statement which asks two questions:

1. Is the user running a version of Windows XP?

2. Is the user running either Windows Vista or Windows 7?

If both these questions are negative we will assume that the use is running Mac OS X.

Once we have determined which OS the user is using we will then grab the documents file path using the Get ( DocumentsPath ) Function and then reformat it to be compatible with the Troi File Plugin.

Formatting for Windows

We use the Replace Function to make this assessment:

Replace ( Get ( DocumentsPath ); 1; 3; “” )

This will replace the “\C:” part of the resulting Get ( DocumentsPath ) with simply “”.

We encase this Replace Function within a Substitute Function so that we can substitute the “/” separator for the “\” separator contained within our $$windowsnetworksymbol and get a properly formatted Windows file path for the Troi Plugin. So we get:

Substitute ((Replace (Get(DocumentsPath); 1; 3; “”)); [“/”; $$windowsnetworksymbol])

With both Windows File Paths to the Dropbox we then simply need to append the correct location which we can easily do by adding:

& “My Dropbox” & $$windowsnetworksymbol in Windows XP

& “Dropbox” & $$windowsnetworksymbol in Vista or Windows 7

Formatting for Mac

We again use Replace Function to remove the leading “/” and as before encase this within a Substitute Function so that we can substitute the “/” separator for the “:” separator. So we get:

Substitute ((Replace (Get(DocumentsPath); 1; 1; “”)); [“/”; “:”]; [“Documents:”; “”])

As you’ll notice we have also added to the Substitute Function a statement to replace the “Documents:”, which will strip back the Mac File Path to the User so we can then append:

& “Dropbox” & “:”

which will get us to the default location for the Dropbox on the Mac.

The Final Function:

Case (

os.version = “Windows XP 64-Bit” or “Windows XP”; Substitute ((Replace (Get(DocumentsPath); 1; 3; “”)); [“/”; $$windowsnetworksymbol]) & “My Dropbox” & $$windowsnetworksymbol;
os.version = “Windows 7” or “Windows Vista”; Substitute ((Replace (Get(DocumentsPath); 1; 3; “”)); [“/”; $$windowsnetworksymbol]) & “Dropbox” & $$windowsnetworksymbol;
Substitute ((Replace (Get(DocumentsPath); 1; 1; “”)); [“/”; “:”]; [“Documents:”; “”]) & “Dropbox” & “:”

)

Please note that I have not yet had the opportunity to test this on a Windows system, but I’ve followed paths that worked in the past. As soon as I have had the opportunity to test it I will post any corrections here.

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Default @Dropbox File Paths

So I needed to know the default file paths for dropbox on the Mac and different versions of Windows for a Filemaker Custom Function I’m building and couldn’t find a simple listing anywhere on the internet so if you’re interested here they are:

Default Dropbox location on Mac OS X:

Macintosh HD/Users/YourUserName/Dropbox/ or more quickly ~/Dropbox

Default Dropbox location on Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\My Documents\My Dropbox\

Default Dropbox location on Windows Vista & 7:

C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\Dropbox\

Source

I found these from the otherwise helpful dropbox Wiki. Check it our here.

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FileMaker Custom Function for formating Date Separators

FileMaker Pro

I’ve finally created from scratch my own custom function for date formatting, I’ve appropriately called format.date (renaming my earlier format.date custom function to format.versions.date) as all it does is replace the date dividers or separators “.” and “-” with a standard “/”.

So here it is:

format.date (theDate)

Let (

_divider = “/”;

GetAsDate ( Substitute ( thedate; [“.”; _divider]; [“-“; _divider] ))

)

I use it on all my date fields with theDate replaced by the FileMaker Self Function and setup as a date field with an auto-enter calculation that replaces the content, so that I can make sure that I have all dates entered with the correct dividers.

I’ve also submitted it to Brian Dunning’s excellent online repository of custom functions so that I can share it with the world. My first act of giving back (hopefully the first of many).

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Exporting to vCard from FileMaker

FileMaker Pro

FileMaker doesn’t offer the same level of system integration with OS X as it’s little brother Bento, although it offers more power. It is possible, however, with a little work to extract the data you want to use, in the format you need.

The advantage of being able to export a contact to a vCard is obvious. Once you have the vCard you can then import that vCard into Apple Address Book and from there into your iPhone or your Blackberry, pick your poison.

Oh and you can of course export either one contact record or all of the records.

So how do we do it?

A little googling led me to this post by Simon Page which provides an excellent guide on how to achieve this solution via a custom function, without any plugins.

Like Simon I stored the results in an un-stored calculation field and used the linked XSL stylesheet to facilitate the export. You can find a link to the standard stylesheet here.

My adjustments

I have adjusted his custom function, which I’ve named (following my conventions) export.vcard to add the following available fields in the vCard:

NICKNAME

This is simple enough to achieve:

Add the parameter:

AKA

Add this to the variables:

_Nickname = AKA;

Add this to the formatting for the vCard:

vnickname = _Nickname;

Add this to the final formatting:

“NICKNAME:” & vnickname & “¶” &

PHOTO

I’ve tried this with a series of combinations of the above, with images held in the file as well as stored with a reference to no effect. So I decided to take a look at a vCard from Apple Address Book with TextMate only to discover it’s encoded in base64. So for the moment I’m stuck, but I’ve a few leads, and I’ll update once I’ve found a solution.

BDAY

This is a little more complicated to achieve. You must export the date field in the right format. Here in the UK we format our dates as DD/MM/YYYY but for it to work with the vCard format it needs to be formatted as YYYY/MM/DD, so I created the following custom un-stored calculation field: c_Formatted_Date_of_Birth.

Rather than perform the calculation in the field I heading over to Brian Dunning’s site again and picked out a suitable custom function to allow me to reformat the date I had in my Date_of_Birth field. I chose this one penned by Tim Anderson. And I was able to provide the date in the format I needed. Then I just needed to:

Add the parameter:

DOB

Add this to the variables:

_BDAY = DOB;

Add this to the formatting for the vCard:

vbday = _BDAY;

Add this to the final formatting:

“BDAY:” & vbday & “¶” &

Updates

I’ve not yet completed my final vCard export routine so I’ll update this blog post with more information as I build out the new database. So check back for more.

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FileMaker Custom Function for Initials

FileMaker Pro

So in my last blog post you’ll of noticed that I used a custom function called format.initials. I used the function in my calculated field: c_Postal_Name so that I could extract the initials from a name.

Custom functions are a great way to reuse FileMaker code again and perform the same function on multiple fields. There are some great resources out there to help you get started with custom functions, my favourite of which is the custom function section on Brian Dunning’s site (see here).

Rather than re-invent the wheel it is often possible to take someone elses code and adapt it for your own use. In this instance I took a custom function by Ray Cologon of NightWing Enterprises, designed to calculate Acronyms.

Apart from renaming it to suit my naming convention (I name all custom functions by their function, so Ray’s Acronym Function became format.acronym) I just added

& “. “

to the function in each section of the loop and my format.initials custom function was born.

So here it is:

format.initials (name)

/*
Adapted from http://www.briandunning.com/cf/33
*/
If (
WordCount (name) > 1;
Upper ( Left (name; 1)) & “. ” &
format.initials ( RightWords ( name; WordCount (name) -1));
Upper ( Left ( name; 1 )) & “. “
)

You’ll also note that I’ve added a reference to the original custom function I’ve adapted so that it’s properly credited and if I need to reference the original again a few months down the line I can easily do so.

Oh and one note of caution here. If you want to make use of custom functions you’ll need FileMaker Pro Advanced.

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