So here, at long last, is the solution:

mebeliLet (
[
NewSubSummary =( GetNthRecord ( MyTable::MyKeyField ; Get(RecordNumber)-1) <> MyTable::MyKeyField ); //Test if record is the start of a new subsummary. MyKeyField is the sort field for my subsummary part.

$on = $val; // $on will always be whatever $val was last
$val = If (NewSubSummary; If ( $val = 1;"" ; 1) ) // switch the value of val
];
$on // if $on=1, then apply the conditional format

)

[edit:] Or, in much simpler terms:

Let (
[
$b = If ($b ;"" ;1 )
];
$b
)

To me, the interesting thing here is the way that these variable expressions are handled by FileMaker. First of all, the conditional formatting seems to get evaluated, as one might expect, from top to bottom of the page, allowing you to use variables to keep track of formatting decisions that were made earlier on the page, or even on previous pages. It seems there should be some much cooler implications of this, like multiple title headers and pseudo-headers (don’t know what I mean by that? Neither do I…). The other interesting thing is that the variables here are local variables, but they’re kept active while the whole page is rendered by preview mode, which is what allows me to make reference to the last evaluation of $val and produce the alternating effect (yeah, I know I could just as easily use global variables, but it’s handy to know I don’t have to)

The reason that this gave me a checkerboard on the first try:

was because I had placed the formula on a repeating field, meaning that each conditional format formula was evaluated for each repetition, left-to-right. Once I placed the calc on a regular field, the checkerboard was gone and I had nice alternating rows.

————-

EDIT: This post got hosed somehow, and everything beyond the part where I refer to myself as an idiot was erased. I can’t remember what was idiotic about my original conditional formatting in this case (if I weren’t such an idiot, I’d probably remember). In any case, below is a reprise of the brain teaser:

———–

Each line in Edoshin’s crosstab technique is basically a repeating summary field based on a repeating summary calc. My goal was to get each one of these repeating fields to alternate its background fill. Using any kind of Mod-based calculation based on record number was going to fail, since these fields are on a subsummary, and there’s no way to predict how many records correspond to each subsummary part.

Taking a purely throw-rocks-at-it-until-it-stops-moving approach, I opened up the conditional formatting dialog on that repeating summary field, and hammered out a calculation. I was astounded, when I went back to preview mode, to see this:

My conditional formatting calc had inadvertently produced a checkerboard pattern. I realized, shortly thereafter, that by placing the same calc on a regular field, rather than a repeating field, I could get the alternating pattern as I desired:

The brain teaser challenge, before it got erased, was to figure out what sort of calculation could yield this effect on a subsummary part. The reward, if I recall correctly, was a signed copy of my memoir.

Step One

Step one, of course, is to read the original post. Familiarize yourself with the concepts. Is essence, we’re leveraging PHP to create a javascript page which displays the map in a FileMaker Web Viewer. In the original post, we used the Easy Google Map PHP class, and we’ll do the same here. You’ll also need a Google Maps API key if you wish to run this on your own server.

This example will be staged at http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/. The Easy Google Map PHP class will be hosted here http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/EasyGoogleMap.class.php. Neither of these links will prove very useful to you on their own, but they will be instrumental later when I build the actual application.

You will need a complementary PHP file to translate the FileMaker request (a GET request via HTTP) to the Easy Google Map class. This is where it gets just a little bit tricky. First off, how should we send multiple addresses via a GET HTTP request?

Perhaps something like this:

http://DOMAIN/MYPHPFILE.PHP?addr1=1st_Address&addr2=2nd_Address

But I can see all sorts of trouble with that, not the least of which is that it involves an ever-growing number of parameters (one for every address we want to map). It’s also not very PHP friendly. With some research and testing, I settled on using a PHP Array. PHP Arrays are very nice indeed. The only problem, how to create a PHP Array (a complex data structure) in FileMaker and then transmit it to the complementary PHP file? It turns out, PHP has a solution for that, too. It’s called a Serialized Array. According to the PHP manual, “This is useful for storing or passing PHP values around without losing their type and structure.” I like it!

Serialized arrays are strings which look something like this:

a:2:{i:0;s:3:"foo";i:1;s:3:"bar";}

That’s a 2-item array, the first item is “foo” (index 0) and the second item is “bar” (index 1).

Here’s my concept: serialize the data (manually or via custom function) in FileMaker, pass the string to the PHP, unserialize it there (turning it into a full-fledged array), and using the native PHP array to build the map data points via looping through the array items.

The Details

I mentioned a custom function above. I’ll need a custom function to translate a carriage-return separated list of data, such as this:

One
Two
Three

Into this:

a:3:{i:0;s:3:"One";i:1;s:3:"Two";i:2;s:5:"Three";}

I wrote a recursive custom function, called cfSerializeData, which is the following:

/*

By: Mike Lee
Date: 4 May 2007
Version: 1
Fxn Name: cfSerializeData
Parameter: ‘values’ – a carriage-return delimited list of values that you want to turn into a PHP serialized array of data
Description: This is a recursive function that takes a list of data in ‘Values’ and turns it into a serialized array for use
within PHP (see serialize() and unserialize() in the PHP documentation). This can be useful for passing lists of data to
a PHP function–either through HTTP calls or the PHP plugin.

Example Input: One¶Two¶Three
Example Result: a:3:{i:0;s:3:”One”;i:1;s:3:”Two”;i:2;s:5:”Three”;}

*/

Let(
[
//Set variables
$NumItems = Case( IsEmpty( $NumItems ) or $NumItems=”0″ ; ValueCount( Values ) ; $NumItems );
i = ValueCount( Values ) - 1;
lastItem = RightValues(values;1);
lastItem = Left(lastItem;Length(lastItem)-1);
remainder = LeftValues(values;ValueCount(values)-1);
headertxt = “a:” & $NumItems & “:{”;
footertxt = Case(i+1=$NumItems;”}”)
]
;

//If remainder is not empty recurse, else clear the variable and write the header txt
Case( not IsEmpty( remainder );cfSerializeData( remainder );Let( $NumItems = $null ; headertxt ))

&

//Actual serialized data
“i:” & i & “;s:” & Length(lastItem) & “:\”” & lastItem & “\”;” &

//Write footer txt (built-in conditional)
footertxt

)

You can then use that custom function, or, if you don’t have FileMaker Pro Advanced, some form of script, to turn a list of addresses into a serialized array of addresses suitable for PHP.

List of addresses:

1 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345
2 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345
3 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345
4 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345

Serialized array of addresses:

a:4:{i:0;s:38:"1 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345";i:1;s:38:"2 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345";i:2;s:38:"3 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345";i:3;s:38:"4 Any Street, Anytown, Anystate, 12345";}

The Complementary PHP file

All this talk about serialized arrays and custom functions and I almost forgot to say that you’ll also need a suitable, complementary PHP file to accept the request and turn it into the Google Maps request. This is the file I’ve written, hosted at http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemaparray.php:

<?php

/* File Name: googlemaparray.php
File URI: http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php
Description: Google Map API wrapper script
Version: 1.1
Author: Mike Lee, The Proof Group LLC
Author URI: http://www.proofgroup.com
*
* Copyright (c) 2007-2008, The Proof Group LLC
* All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* * Redistributions in any form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* * Neither the name of The Proof Group LLC nor the
* names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
* derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE PROOF GROUP LLC ``AS IS'' AND ANY
* EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
* WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
* DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL <copyright holder> BE LIABLE FOR ANY
* DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
* (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
* LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
* ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
* (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
* SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
*/

require 'EasyGoogleMap.class.php';

//Google Maps API Key
$googlemaps_api_key = "XXX-XXX-XXX-INSERT-YOUR-KEY-HERE";

//Get the ‘addr’ parameter from the GET request
$addrarray = $_GET[’addr’];
$addrarray = stripslashes($addrarray);

$addrarray = unserialize($addrarray);

$gm = & new EasyGoogleMap($googlemaps_api_key);

# Set address point(s)
foreach( $addrarray as $key => $value){
$gm->SetAddress($value);
}

# To Enable/Disable Map Type (Map/Satellite/Hybrid)
$gm->mMapType = TRUE;

# Set map size
$gm->SetMapWidth(’700′);
$gm->SetMapHeight(’500′);

# Set map zoom
$gm->SetMapZoom(8);

?>
<html>
<head>
<title>The Proof Group: Google Map Array API Example</title>
<?php echo $gm->GmapsKey(); ?>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<?php
echo $gm->MapHolder();
echo $gm->InitJs();
echo $gm->UnloadMap();
?>
<font face="arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif" size="-1">
Google Maps Array API Example hosted by <a href="http://www.proofgroup.com">The Proof Group</a>.<br>
See the original post on this topic at <a href="http://fmcollective.com/?p=88">The FileMaker Collective</a> for more information.<p>
</center>
</font>
<font face="arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif" size="-2">
Terms of Use: Thank you for using <a href="http://www.proofgroup.com">The Proof Group</a> Google Maps API. (1) You may not use this API for commercial purposes (2) Use of this API is limited to 100 requests per IP per day (3) You are subject to all terms and conditions of the Google Maps API Terms of Use, <a href="http://www.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html">
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/terms.html</a>.
</font>
</body>
</html>

The important part is the ‘foreach’, foreach( $addrarray as $key => $value) {$gm->SetAddress($value);}, which loops through the array and adds all the addresses as individual map points. This is really the only major difference betweent he single-point mapping PHP file and this one.

What of FileMaker

How does this work from within FileMaker? Essentially, using a list of addresses, you loop through the addresses and capture them to a carriage-return delimited list – the old SetField(LIST;LIST & myAddress & ¶) trick.

Once you’ve got the list, you’ll serialize it using the custom function – SetField(ARRAY;cfSerializeData(LIST)).

Then, it’s just a matter of calling the correct URL from within the Web Viewer:

http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemaparray.php?addr=ARRAY

First, in FileMaker, you need a table of address data. Here I’m using some really awful, made-up addresses:

I’ve also created a Globals table, with the fields: ARRAY, LIST, and URL (all of which are text, globals).

In layout mode, add a Web Viewer (here, in an enlarged header part), point it to the Globals::URL field and name it ‘wv’ in the object information floating window:

Within FileMaker, I wrapped the entire thing into a Script called “Update Map With Found Set”, a screenshot of which follows:

For convenience, I also attached this script to a button on the layout to update the Web Viewer. Back in browse, get a found set (more about that later), and press the button:

For a found set of 25 records, the request URL will look something like this (pardon the mess):

http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemaparray.php?addr=a:25:{i:0;s:35:”Main Street, Wallingford, CT, 06492″;i:1;s:34:”Main Street, New Canaan, CT, 08640″;i:2;s:34:”Main Street, Manchester, CT, 06042″;i:3;s:34:”Main Street, Ridgefield, CT, 06877″;i:4;s:33:”Main Street, Riverside, CT, 06878″;i:5;s:33:”Main Street, Greenwich, CT, 06830″;i:6;s:28:”Main Street, Lyme, CT, 06371″;i:7;s:31:”Main Street, Cos Cob, CT, 06807″;i:8;s:34:”Main Street, Stonington, CT, 06378″;i:9;s:31:”Main Street, Madison, CT, 06443″;i:10;s:35:”Main Street, New Britain, CT, 06053″;i:11;s:34:”Main Street, Farmington, CT, 06032″;i:12;s:30:”Main Street, Darien, CT, 06820″;i:13;s:35:”Main Street, Wallingford, CT, 06492″;i:14;s:32:”Main Street, Westport, CT, 06880″;i:15;s:31:”Main Street, Milford, CT, 06460″;i:16;s:32:”Main Street, Simsbury, CT, 06070″;i:17;s:32:”Main Street, Rowayton, CT, 06853″;i:18;s:29:”Main Street, Essex, CT, 06426″;i:19;s:32:”Main Street, Stamford, CT, 06902″;i:20;s:37:”Main Street, West Hartford, CT, 06110″;i:21;s:35:”Main Street, Wallingford, CT, 06492″;i:22;s:33:”Main Street, Greenwich, CT, 06830″;i:23;s:30:”Main Street, Orange, CT, 06477″;i:24;s:40:”Main Street, Vernon Rockville, CT, 06066″;}

What could go wrong?

There’s one problem with this technique. Here’s how to reproduce the issue. Show all records and update the map. With all 177 records showing, the Web Viewer map should fail and the following should be shown:

Request-URI Too Large

The requested URL’s length exceeds the capacity limit for this server

I’m no Apache expert, but I know this is based on some form of compile-time configuration and is specific to a GET request. Since the Web Viewer only allows me to use GET requests, we have this upper limit issue (somewhere around 100 records in this example). Alternatively, you can re-compile Apache, but I’ll let you figure that one out.

The solution, of course, is to use POST, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Hint: you may have to do things completely differently and FM9 helps.

By the way, once you add “Labels” (one for each address, for example to show demographic info) and other display niceties (e.g. varying marker icons or colors) to your request URL, the maximum number of addresses you can map will plummet. When I’ve fleshed this out, the max easily drops to below 50 records.

Do have fun and let me know what you think in the comments.

You can download a zipped copy of the example file here.

To the left is an example of what I mean. This effect can’t be achieved with portals (as far as I know). In this example, the canonical approach would be to construct a layout based on the invoice line items. However, doing so would make it impossible for me to put in the text element down the right side, or to incorporate related data from multiple tables.

To solve the problem, I create repeating calc fields in the invoice table and define them to refer to specific related records, depending on the repetition. For example:
 

Now, although FM 9 didn’t fulfill my wish of making this technique obsolete, it did offer a fix for one of the shortcomings of the technique – alternate row shading. To achieve this, make sure one of your pseudoportal fields extends the width of the whole set (usually, I just use the first field). Set conditional formatting on it for the color you want using this formula:

http://www.petervinogradov.com/TechniqueFiles/PV_PseudoPortals.zip 

The file also includes some fun CFs and examples for automatically balancing multi-column pseudoportals.

The fuss over Andy’s conditional formatting tricks, for example, is certainly well-deserved (though let’s face it, we all would have worked that stuff out on our own, right? no?).  After playing with those for a bit, a post about Ray Cologon’s “Progress Bars” ( http://www.nightwing.com.au/FileMaker/demos.html ) caught my attention, and I ended up spending a good afternoon hacking that file apart.

What I particularly love about this solution is the idea of dumping a bunch of webviewer resources (pictures, etc.) into the user’s temp folder using the get (temporarypath) function. While I’ve certainly employed some variations on this – sneaking some garbage PDFs into a my docs folder or out to the desktop prior to e-mailing, etc – I’ve been overlooking the temp folder for years (mostly I guess because there’s never been a convenient get function for it before). Now with FM 9 data URLs finally working, the webviewer has (almost) completely arrived, and a convenient place to dump huge amounts of rubbish couldn’t be more timely. [edit - just read the "dispatches from DevCon" post. Evidently this demo was a big hit there, too]

Lately, I’ve been scrambling to finish a rewrite of a scheduling solution for a school that I work for. The requirements are simple – be able to define courses in any variety of blocks and times and dynamically generate graphical student schedules with seamless handling of overlaps and conflicts. Once upon a time, I tried to achieve this using microscopic portal rows and a schedule table with zillions of records and dozens of lead-like calculations. It worked, but it was only “dynamic” from a geologic perspective and it made white smoke pour out the back of my Dell.

With the web viewer, of course, that all changed – almost. I was able to throw out the schedule table and generate a whole mess of CSS Divs instead. The schedules were coming out slicker and faster than ever, but FM was still doing all the heavy lifting of stitching together adjacent course blocks, knocking out overlaps, and sizing text based on available block sizes. Spitting out a batch of schedules was no longer an overnight project, but it was still burdened with a sluggishness that gnawed at me in light of all the extra coding and testing it took to implement.

Over the course of this project, it did occur to me to try moving the heavy lifting over to the web browser, but I hesitated for a couple of reasons:

- I hadn’t written a word of Javascript in over 3 years
- generating HTML in an FM calc or CF is painful enough. Imagine having to debug a bunch of Javascript with escaped quotations everywhere.

Finally, though, it was Ray’s sample file that gave me the kick I needed. If I could simply pack my javascript into a container file, have that dumped into the user’s temp folder, and reference it in my HTML, life would be a lot simpler.

After two days of dusting off the cobwebs in my Javascript memory (nothing like a few years of FM calc habits to help THAT along…), I’ve finally got a rough library of functions that can connect and polish several dozen disjointed, poorly formatted div tags in a split-second. It beats the pants off the custom functions I had going in FM, and only rarely does it lock up my browser in an endless loop (okay, so there’s some debugging to do).

So, three cheers for sample files, particulary Ray’s 9 for 9 collection. Looking forward to 10 for 10 - unless of course FM comes out with something boneheaded, like  ”FM Creative Suite”, “FMX”, “FM smooth ultra king 100s”…

Steven H. Blackwell
Platinum Member, FileMaker Business Alliance
FileMaker 8 Certified Developer
FileMaker 7 Certified Developer

Comprehensive, real-time maintenance of data integrity and data availability in FileMaker Pro databases is an on-going and significant challenge for business owners, database developers, database administrators (DBA’s), and IS/IT managers in organizations of all types and sizes. Whether you are a government agency in the health care field, an airline maintenance department, a small business providing commercial dish-washing facilities for the food services industry, a business trade association or professional society, or a small dry-cleaning business contractor on a military base, you have to be able to rely on the fact that your data will be available when needed and that those data are accurate and complete.

Like the Dark Force from some science fiction movie, there are a host of elements that ceaselessly conspire to attack the availability and integrity of your data day in and day out. And hovering over many database installations are also a myriad of regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the European Union’s Basel II, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and the Buckley Act—to name just a few.

What can go wrong? And given that accidents can happen even in the best-regulated of households, when things do go wrong, how can DBA’s and IS/IT people fix them? And given that in many small businesses the business owner is the DBA and lacks formal DBA or IS/IT training, how does that business owner recover from what could be a disaster?

In this paper I will detail a number of errors and events that can occur. I will also explain some concepts for addressing, mitigating, and even reversing those errors. I will focus particularly on the difficult issues of deletion management, of backup reconciliation, both roll-back and roll-forward, and of regulatory compliance.

To read the rest of this article, http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/187893/

As a fulltime educator, there’s never any shortage of new and exciting projects to inspire me and capture my interest. As an FM developer, though, it can sometimes be a bit of a stretch. Even new releases of FileMaker (like that‘ll happen any time soon…) can be a melancholy blend of “gee whiz” moments and feature request letdowns (”what?! They didn’t include facial recognition on container fields?! Damnit, I’ve been asking for that since version 4!”). Fortunately, we can sometimes count on our clients to throw something fun our way.

Recently, a client asked me if we could integrate barcode scanning into their solution. It was a simple problem – set up a workstation so that the user could scan items off a catalog and have them end up in a proposal. For me though, I have to confess a little hesitation. As far as I was concerned, barcodes are for the big boys like Walmart and my public library. Why couldn’t my client just get by with the FileMaker value lists I had painstakingly set up for them (My specialty, the “item selection club sandwich”, stacked 12 deep with key-based dropdowns, masking popup menus, scriptevent plain entry, type-aheads, conditional container fields, mayonnaise, etc.). Anyway, I’d heard of barcodes, and understood the concept, so I said what the heck.

After shopping a bit, I found a scanner, ordered it and set about reading the Wikipedia entries on barcode symbologies. When I awoke three days later, the scanner had arrived (Symbol LS2208). I recommend this unit, but if you buy it, don’t order the “multi-interface” version unless you have some clue how to make the phone-jack-looking “multi-interface” end of the cable fit into your computer. The USB version, on the other hand, is really cool, and it was only a matter of seconds before I was scanning everything in my office and marveling at the little numbers getting magically typed into notepad.

If you’re integrating barcode scanning into a solution for the first time, and are simple-minded, be sure to plan for this phase of idiotic wonder, as it can be time-consuming. If you choose to bill your clients for it, then let me save them some money and share my research notes on this phase:

• You can’t draw working barcodes freehand. Don’t try.
• You can’t scan a barcode off the screen unless you own a CCD scanner
• The characters printed under the barcodes on stuff you own are exactly what the barcode says. There are no surprises or hidden messages.
• For father’s day, get your father a t-shirt with a barcode that represents the string “A55FACE”. It will amuse him at the supermarket self checkout.

With this research out of the way, I began to think about how to integrate my scanner with FileMaker. In it’s simplest form, you could click into a field, scan a barcode, and have that code appear in the field. Time-saving and cool, but it still falls well short of the kind of functionality your local grocer takes for granted. Ideally, you want each scan to trigger a script, and you want that script to take the contents of your scan and deliver it to the right place, and you want to be able to do everything without going back to your keyboard or moving your mouse. In fact, if you could do it without looking at the screen, that would be an even bigger bonus.

Possibly the simplest approach (other than the lame one described previously) would be to have a big global field to collect your scans, along with a button to parse the collected scans when you’re all done. To do this, though, you need a way for your scans to separate with carriage returns. Enter the world of ADF (stands for: awesome dynamic fun – look it up) rules, which are little macros that you can teach your scanner to perform every time it scans something. Luckily the LS2208 Quickstart Guide comes with a series of three barcodes just for this purpose. Scan them in order, and magically, your scanner will insert a carriage return after every scan.

While I had considered this approach briefly, it felt a bit cheap and it didn’t provide the user enough feedback to let them know what they were scanning (a field full of ID codes isn’t very friendly). So, I cracked open the 400 page PDF that comes with the LS2208 and started learning more about ADF. From my initial read, it looked like the way to teach my scanner to do fancy scanner tricks was to jump around the 400-page PDF, work out the proper series of steps, represented as barcodes, and scan them in exactly the right order (and of course, from my research in the idiotic wonder phase, I knew I would have to do a lot of printing since I couldn’t scan off the screen). So while I found all these magic ADF barcodes to be really neat, in theory, I began to wonder whether the people at Symbol (Motorola) might not have bothered to write some software to handle all of this. Digging around in my LS2208 CD, I discovered exactly that, a little utility called 123Scan. I ran it, and spent an hour and a half trying to get it to talk to my scanner. A quick trip to the PDF let me know that it would only work if my scanner was connected by RS232 serial cable. I was about to resign myself to hours of tedious flipping through the PDF when I discovered that I could use 123Scan to generate a script of ADF barcodes and send them to my printer. Happy Day.

So, first order of business was to get FileMaker to execute a script when a barcode got scanned. What I figured I could do was use the ADF rules to prepend a keyboard shortcut to the front of each scan. I really wanted something out-of-the-way, like CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+6, but it didn’t seem like ADF could get that fancy. CTRL+6 would have to do. In FileMaker, I set up a custom menu for my script and gave it the CTRL+6 shortcut.

My next concern was the time lag between launching the script and handling the remaining data. I didn’t want the barcode data stream to get lost while FileMaker was trying to get a script in gear. Fortunately, ADF allows you to set pauses, so I did (with a little experimenting, it seemed like 0.4 seconds was as short as I could make it and still have it be reliable).

Finally, I knew I would need an enter key (the keypad variety, not the keyboard version), and a beep at the end to let the user know the scanner was ready to go again.

With all of that set up in 123Scan I printed up the ADF barcode instruction series, scanned it into my LS2208 and behold, it worked. What followed, of course, was another hour or so of Idiotic Wonder – “Does it really work? Wow. What happens if I scan this? Wow. What about this? Wow. What about from 2 feet away? Wow. Etc.”

Of course, you do have to think about what you want your FM script to do with its data stream. After some experimenting, I settled on having it invoke a custom dialog with the title “Gathering Barcode” and a single global variable input field. With the “Enter” key suffixed by ADF rules, this dialog only flashes for a second and I kind of like the visual feedback. With this barcode collected, I could safely process the input, manage context, error trap, etc.

Another gotcha is the possibility of unfriendly barcodes. Suppose someone accidentally (read: inquisitively) scans their gym pass. In my case, I knew all the “good” barcodes would represent ID numbers with the same common two-letter prefix. It took some fiddling, but I was able to organize my ADF rules so that barcodes without the prefix would just generate a beep and pass nothing to the computer.

Finally, what about generating the barcodes themselves? My client assures me that they have an office supply vendor who will generate sequential barcode stickers for all items going forward, but I also wanted the option of generating the occasional set of labels in-house. Working together, Google and I turned up this handy tool: http://www.barcodemill.com/index.php Which also includes a neat little image tool you could work into a web viewer: http://www.barcodemill.com/tech/index.php?load=/tech/install/millfree.php (I’m not sure the operator would look favorably on an industrial-strength application of this – they do have a commercial version – but I imagine the occasional lookup wouldn’t hurt). If someone out there knows of a better free barcode generator, please post below.

As for symbology, I settled on Code 128. It supports a full ASCII set and is relatively compact. The next phase of this project is going to involve a mobile solution for walking around a showroom floor and collecting items to upload later. I’ve set aside a full two days for idiotic wonder when that hardware comes in…

Google Mapping in FileMaker

I’m sure you’ve seen the Web Viewer maps in FileMaker. Sure, they’re serviceable, but you’ve got no control. And with Google recently adding “Search Results” and “My Maps” to the screen as well (a laudable feature, to be sure), the available real estate for the actual map shrunk by almost half. What can be done? I’ll show you how to roll you own mapping engine using PHP and the Google Map API.

Using the built-in tools

Simple Google maps can be produced in FileMaker using the Web Viewer object. I’m sure you’ve all seen this:

This is the Web Viewer Setup for that example:

What’s wrong here?

The problem with this, in my opinion, is that the Search Results and My Maps area of the map takes up almost half of the screen. Further, you’ve got limited to no control of how this looks. And, one click on a link and the user is off browsing the web—not exactly what you want them to be doing.

Using the API

I decided to turn to the Google Maps API to attempt to solve these issues. The first step here is to sign up for a Google Maps API Key for the site you’ll be hosting your maps from (the maps will still need a home).

So as not to re-invent the wheel, my first step was to search for a PHP wrapper for the Google Maps API that I could use as the basis for my mapping API. I found one that I came to like called the Easy Google Map class. This PHP class wraps all the JavaScript in PHP calls, so a PHP-buff like myself can easily use it. You’ll need to download the Easy Google Map class (”EasyGoogleMap.class.php”) and install it on a webserver that supports PHP (the same one for which you got the Google Maps API key).

In this example, we’ll be staging the work at http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/, so the class will be located at http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/EasyGoogleMap.class.php. You can load this URL now, if you’d like, but you won’t get anything because it’s a PHP class and doesn’t return anything on its own.

The next step, of course, is to write a complementary PHP file that will actually be the mapping API. My thought was to make this simple to call from FileMaker, with a URL formatted like the following:

http://DOMAIN/MYCOMPLIMENTARYPHPFILE.PHP?addr=The+Address+To+Map

To do this I’ll need a PHP file that can grab the ‘addr’ parameter and process it according to the needs of the Easy Google Mapping Class in order to produce a map.

Here’s what my file (which I have named ‘googlemap.php’) looks like:


<?php
/*
* File Name: googlemap.php
* File URI: http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php
* Description: Google Map API wrapper script
* Version: 1.0
* Author: Mike Lee, The Proof Group LLC
* Author URI: http://www.proofgroup.com
*
* Copyright (c) 2007, The Proof Group LLC
* All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* * Redistributions in any form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* * Neither the name of The Proof Group LLC nor the
* names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
* derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE PROOF GROUP LLC ``AS IS'' AND ANY
* EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
* WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
* DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY
* DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
* (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
* LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
* ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
* (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
* SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
*/
require 'EasyGoogleMap.class.php';
# Google Maps API Key
$googlemaps_api_key = "XXX-XXX-XXX-INSERT-YOUR-KEY-HERE";
# Get the 'addr' parameter from the GET request
$addr = $_GET['addr'];
$gm = & new EasyGoogleMap($googlemaps_api_key);
# Set address point(s)
$gm->SetAddress($addr);
$gm->SetInfoWindowText($addr);
$gm->SetSideClick($addr);
# To Enable/Disable Map Type (Map/Satellite/Hybrid)
$gm->mMapType = TRUE;
# Set map size
$gm->SetMapWidth('700');
$gm->SetMapHeight('600');
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>EasyGoogleMap</title>
<?php echo $gm->GmapsKey(); ?>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<?php
echo $gm->GetSideClick();
echo $gm->MapHolder();
echo $gm->InitJs();
echo $gm->UnloadMap();
?>
</center>
</body>
</html>


Copy that text and save it as ‘googlemap.php’ (you’ll want to insert your own API key where indicated). That file is now hosted here: http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php. You will want to put it in the same directory you put the EasyGoogleMap.class.php file.

A direct link to the file, which you can download, is here: Google Map PHP File. You will need to rename the file ‘googlemap.php’.

The fmcollective directory now looks like this:

.
|-- EasyGoogleMap.class.php
`-- googlemap.php


If you load the googlemap.php page right now, you’ll notice it’s blank, because you’ve not passed it any address to map (via the ‘addr’ parameter).

A fully working example URL is the following: http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php?addr=1600+Amphitheatre+Pkwy,+Mountain+View,+CA+94043.

Put the API into FileMaker’s Web Viewer

Now, let’s go back to the top and put this into FileMaker’s Web Viewer. Here’s a screenshot of what the finished product looks like:

The Web Viewer setup is for a ‘Custom Web Address’ set to the following:

"http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php?" & "addr=" & /*Address=*/ Contact Preferred Address::Street & ", " & /*City=*/ Contact Preferred Address::City & ", " & /*State=*/ Contact Preferred Address::StateProv & " " & /*Zip Code=*/ Contact Preferred Address::PostalCode

I hope you’ve enjoyed my first post and learned something useful. Comments are welcome.

As FileMaker developers, we take a lot of things for granted. For example, FileMaker’s Browse Mode/Find Mode feature is actually pretty slick; just place a field on a layout and it becomes both a data-update field as well as a query field without additional coding. However, when a layout is set to “save record changes automatically”, the frequency of people thinking they are in Find mode when they are actually happily clobbering data is enough to drive the most laissez-faire FileMaker developer nuts.

Sometimes, calling such problems “training-issues” just isn’t enough.

One solution is to roll your own Edit Mode feature. This technique uses the power of global variables in FileMaker 8+. In this example, I am going to combine scripts, a global variable and a custom privilege set to regulate users’ record-edit access.

Note: this article in intended to illustrate a general technique, do not rely solely on this example to secure your database.

The screenshots below are from a Mac but this tip is platform-agnostic.

Download the Example File

Note: the top level account is “admin” with no password

Step-by-Step

1. Create the table
In this example, I am going to start with a new file. I have defined a table called “contacts with a few basic fields.

Don’t worry about the “lock status” field for now; that is an interface bell-and-whistle that I added to give the user some visual feedback. Check out the example file to learn more about that later.

2. Create the “toggle” script
Next, I am going to create a basic script that toggles the edit mode. The script is going to use a global variable as a switch. It sets a global variable to either 1 or zero each time the script is called.

I have chosen to name my global variable switch $$__locked but you could call it whatever you wish. Just make sure it is a global variable because we want the variable to hold on to its value after the script is run.

The script works by checking first to see if $$__locked is “on” (i.e. has a value that isn’t zero or empty). If $$__locked is “on”, the script turns our switch “off” by setting $$__locked to zero.

3. Configure record level access

We need to tell FileMaker to check the global $$__locked before allowing our user to make record changes. Since record access is controlled by FileMaker privilege, I am going to go over to the Define>Accounts & Privileges… menu and create a User account with a custom privilege set called “User”…

To configure the record data access setting, I select ‘Custom Privileges’ from the ‘Records’ pull down menu of the ‘Edit Privilege Set’ screen…

I am going to control access to the “contacts” table by highlighting it and changing the ‘Edit’ privilege to ‘limited…”

My goal is to use a calculation expression to govern the user’s record modification activity. Records can be edited when:

not $$__locked...

FileMaker will evaluate the expression not $$__locked each time the user tries to modify a record. If $$__locked is zero or empty, the expression not $$__locked will evaluate to true (not locked) and the user will get to edit records. If $$__locked is “1″, our expression will evaluate to false and our user will be blocked from making any changes to ‘contact’ records.

4. Bells & Whistles

In the example file, you’ll note that I have added couple of simple re-login scripts to toggle between my “user” account and my “admin” account.

Finally, let’s cap it off by attaching a button to our script and by adding a “lock status” calculation field to create a simple indicator of the record lock status.

Cheers!

At the outset of the program, the SE’s made a very critical point about successful deployment of FileMaker Pro solutions to FileMaker Server. That point bears repeating here. For a deployment to be successful, three keys parts must be properly configured and designed as well as properly aligned with one another:

•The Server hardware and operating system,
•The FileMaker Server services/daemons, and,
•The developer designed FileMaker Pro solution.

Typically, there has been some considerable discussion about the third point: solution design. The Certification Program, various on-line resources, educational programs, seminars, etc. focus on this. FileMaker Tech Support, the SE’s, the development engineers, and a few senior developers have provided guidance and information about the second point: the FileMaker Server services or daemons.

However, there has been very little discussion about the first item: server hardware and operating system requirements. Outside of the Server Best Practices White Paper authored by Wim Decorte [http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/techbrief_fm8_server.pdf] and some postings that he and I have made to various forums, there has been very little discussion about this until the SE’s started this series of seminars.

I want to commend the SE’s for conducting these seminars and to commend FileMaker, Inc. for providing them. They are absolutely critical in my view to having successful FileMaker deployment experiences. The responsibility remains however for us as developers to acquaint ourselves with the requirements of all three parts of the Triad of Server and to learn and follow best practices for successful deployments of solutions hosted by FileMaker Server 8 or FileMaker Server 8 Advanced.

Steven H. Blackwell
Platinum Member, FileMaker Business Alliance
Partner Member, FileMaker Solutions Alliance (1997-2007)
FileMaker 8 Certified Developer
FileMaker 7 Certified developer