ISO FileMaker Magazine

One of the greatest joys I get from working with FileMaker is making it do something it doesn't do natively. It's sort of like always being able to say "Yes" and never having to tell yourself "No". Enjoying your sweets and treats as much as you like! There is, quite literally, nothing I can think of that can't be done just outside FileMaker and brought back in to the software.

Do you need OCR? AI processing? Serious image manipulation, complicated heuristics, complex PDF manipulation, data scraping from HTML or anything else? You name your need and a solution can be found. You simply need to be willing to step ever so slightly just outside FileMaker and your result will be found.

In this video, I'll show you the technology you need and how to integrate the technology to pretty much solve any problem. It's always just a matter of knowing where and how to look and then integrating what you find. No matter what your needs are, I can promise that short of a real-life magic wand, the info in this video will put you on the path to solving the problem you think Claris/FileMaker can't.

Importing data may be a very common task for some of your FileMaker workflows. Of course, not all data is going to come from the wonderful world of an online API. Some software just doesn't make its data available through the Internet.

So, what you often need to do is get hold of the import file and then create the script. But, what happens if your data for import is in some obscure location and may be hard for the user to find? Well, in that situation we want to work with as many known values as possible in order to automate the process. Getting things to the point where the user really only needs to click a single button is a great solution.

In this video, I showcase all the pieces to the puzzle of automating most any importing workflow. You really only need to know where the data is coming from and if you need to move things around to make the process just a little bit easier.

This is a great video if you've never taken a look underneath the hood at your own computer's operating system. It will reveal a lot of insight into the many things you can do with FileMaker Pro once you know how to access the myriad of available tools.

When first learning about file operations, while working with PHP, I remember having to learn about the concept of buffers and buffer streams. Fortunately, we're not quite there yet within FileMaker. But, we have arrived at the point of learning about the nitty-gritty details of understanding all the details of files and how they factor into the FileMaker universe. FileMaker 18 released support for file IO and we're certainly going to be taking advantage of it in this new world of APIs and inter-connected applications.

If you've been using various FileMaker plugins which support the input and output of file data, then this video and its lessons may not be necessary. However, if you've rarely or never dealt with file IO (input & output), then you will certainly gain a lot of knowledge when watching this video and using the included file.

If your solution has the need to either output or input data from external systems or files, then understanding line endings and encodings is the key to working with files. Beyond the basics, we have FileMaker specific implementation of file IO. And, that's exactly what this video covers!