ISO FileMaker Magazine

While working on a solution which made heavy use of an online API for REST based communication, the solution slowly revealed it had a large number of "specially dedicated" data processing scripts. Many of these scripts were quite normal in the realm of "I have some data, I want to put it into the right place." You know, your typical Go To Layout then Set Field script steps.

The issue, however, was that most all of them did somewhat they same thing - a lot of code duplication. They either put the data into a field on some layout or they moved it into a global variable.

For myself, while developing within any solution, I always try to see where efficiency can be improved and implement as needed. The result of some recent efforts was creating a generalized data writer for JSON based data. It turns out that this solution is quite efficient and allows you to not only reduce your total number of solution scripts, but also makes it quite convenient to provide instructions about where data needs to be stored.

If you enjoy optimizing your solution's method of handling data, then it's very likely you'll benefit from a number of the valuable lessons within this comprehensive video about a JSON Data Writer script.

Your FileMaker database is obviously designed to store data. FileMaker also provides the tools for precisely extracting that data as needed. When and how you extract the data is based on your needs. Sometimes, you need the data for an external system or API. Maybe it's needed for an export or you need the data specifically for a given visualization of that data.

In a recent video, I showed some Sankey Diagrams and how cool they are as visualization tools. One of keys to presenting a great visualization is being able to extract the data you need to present. This data may also change as the user navigates through the chart or your user interface.

So, in short, we need to be familiar with all the various ways in which we can collect our data out of the database. Fortunately, there is a somewhat small collection of methods, but knowing how each of them work and when you might use one over the other is a matter of experience and practice. In this video, I cover the possible variations and you get to choose which method you want to use and when. The ultimate method is something you'll find towards the end of the video.

While many FileMaker solutions will manage multiple parameter passing in very simple and straight-forward ways, there are some solutions which you know will grow over time. Because of this expected growth, you may want to have an additional level of comfort knowing you've implemented a very strict system for managing data transfer between scripts.

You also may be interested in working with external APIs and connecting to systems and data which is provided via the currently popular format of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).

Since the release of FileMaker 16, we've had access to the fundamental JSON* functions. With their initial release, there were a number of developers who immediately jumped on the bandwagon. Since FileMaker 16 was released, we've had a good bit of time to codify some methods and helpful custom functions for working with JSON formatted data.

This video is all about providing comprehensive initial coverage about how JSON can be used for passing multiple parameters within FileMaker. If you never quite taken the plunge into using JSON for parameter passing then this video and the associated file may very well provide you with the incentive to take a more serious look. At the very least, you'll know what's going on when other developers mention they're using JSON parameters!

Unless you've got a billion dollars to send out tens of thousands of cars with specially fitted technology mounted on their roofs; and, you can send them all across the planet, then you'll likely need to rely on mapping data from a third party.

So, here we go with learning how we can leverage Google Maps APIs within FileMaker. This video will cover the essential knowledge you need in order to make the requests about geolocations whether they be latitude longitude coordinates or an address.

As you've likely used Google Maps within the web browser, it's great to know you can access that same data directly within FileMaker; even the traffic data. It's just a simple matter of creating the right url. Making a request for what you want, and then parsing the data right back into your FileMaker table. Let's learn about the process and wire up the technology!

This video is a continuation of the first video in this series where we took a look at connecting to Google's myriad of available services. Once you know how to make the secure connection which Google requires, you can access all the possible services.

The trick with working with web services, such as Google or AWS, is that you need to become familiar with how FileMaker requests data and then process the response. We tackle that task within this video then move on to working with Google Drive in order to determine which file it is we want to work with.

After making a successful connection we also need to know how to maintain or re-establish that connection. Google doesn't keep the door open forever you know. So, settle in for another longer, but valuable exploration of connecting to Google's services.

The ingenuity of developers has always extended beyond the limitations presented within any given environment - both physical and virtual. If you can't cross a river with your cart and horse, then you learn how to build a bridge and make it last.

Such is the case with FileMaker's script parameters. There's always been only one way to pass anything into a script - as one big blob of text. There's nothing which controls what type of data is embedded within the block of text and it's up to the developer to create a method for passing discrete pieces of data. From the most basic method of simply passing a return delimited list of data we can always take the individual pieces one by one from the list.

Things, however, can get a bit more complex with larger amounts of data. When you need to pass return delimited data as a single parameter out of many you have to be a bit more creative. This is where FileMaker's addition of its JSON functions within FileMaker 16 have helped moved the feature set forward. While there is no native methods for passing multiple parameters, we do have a standard structure for name/value pairs now when working with FileMaker.

In the world of serialized data, there's only been a few key technologies and XML was certainly the forerunner. It's been around since the mid 90's and was originally added into FileMaker around version 5 - if memory serves. The implementation of XML/XSLT/XPATH wasn't fully complete with compatible functions and it only works as an import and export feature via the use of an XSLT style sheet.

Learning XSLT and XPATH weren't the easiest things to do and as computing moved forward, so did other technologies. Now, with JSON and JavaScript taking the programming world by storm, we have a new method of serialization and this one is baked into FileMaker.

So, these days, you have the choice of learning xpath and using a plug-in in order to extract data out of XML or you can just convert it into a format such as JSON for simply pulling the data out using FileMaker 16's new JSON functions. With this technique file, and video, you'll be well on your way to extracting data out of XML files if you need to do so.

As with visiting any new country where they speak a different language, if you can’t speak it, then it’s pretty hard to communicate. The same thing applies to intercommunication between technical systems. If you don’t take the time to learn the format being used, then you obviously won’t get very far.

In this video, we take a look at processing JSON from GitHub’s API. It’s one of the last places we’re looking for FileMaker Custom functions. GitHub is a web site which hosts hundreds of thousands of code repositories. These code repositories represent many hundreds of thousands of coding hours. To not take advantage of any pre-existing resources seems a bit silly.

The trick to working with any cloud based resource is to simply learn what questions to ask and how to process the answers you get back. Of course, there’s always that critical piece of know-how which is all about processing the data in the first place. If you’ve never written a recursive FileMaker script, then you’ll certainly see some in action when dissecting the script in this version of our Custom Function database!