ISO FileMaker Magazine

FileMaker Pro provides a variety of methods for extracting your data from its database. From memory, we have standard relationships and calculated concatenations, the Copy All Records script step, scripted data loops and using the ExecuteSQL function. In FileMaker 19, we're provided with yet one more method for pulling data out of the system. The Execute FileMaker Data API script step allows us to use what was formerly available only from outside of FileMaker Pro via a url.

Now, within our scripts, we can use this fast retrieval method for extracting data in the popular and common JSON format. Able to use that data in both web viewers and many other places within your solution. Knowing how to use this new script step will help you extract the data you need - when you need it.

By carefully crafting a specific layout, and using the Execute FileMaker Data API script step, you'll be able employ techniques such as Virtual List and using the data for presentation within Web Viewers. You can also simply pull the data for use within UI elements as simple as a button.

Let's take a tour of this relatively new feature and understand how we can use all of its numerous features.

While it's been around for a few years now, there aren't too many developers in the world of FileMaker who have explored Node-RED. Created by IBM and made open source in 2016, this visual programming tool may start to make waves in the FileMaker world.

A wonderfully generous developer named Lui de la Parra has made it possible to use Node-RED with FileMaker's own Data API. This means that anything in the world of Node-RED is now accessible to FileMaker. This is an amazingly powerful technology for connecting all kinds of things, both physical and virtual, into the FileMaker ecosystem.

In this video, I walk through my own personal use of Node-RED and showcase how I use it in order to capture XML data from an online store and process that data directly into FileMaker.

Whether you need to collect moisture data from physical hardware in a vineyard to interacting with any online web service or API, Node-RED, in conjunction with the Data API, will allow you to realize all kinds of powerful solutions!