ISO FileMaker Magazine

When talking about logging, error handling and writing clean code it's never quite as exciting as working on the key features of your solution. Adding in the "cool" stuff and simply making things work is way more fun.

Yet, one of the main things you rely on when developing is information from users and from your software itself. If you don't capture any of that helpful information, then you're essentially developing in the dark. You'll get obscure support requests like "It doesn't work." which is... Oh so helpful - isn't it?

So, one of the core things you should add to pretty much any system is a method of both logging and error handling. While an error log sounds like something you should certainly have, you'll want to separate the two and have your errors simply be captured into your logging system. On the flip side, you can use your logging system to capture quite literally anything you might want to track within your system.

In the associated video and technique file, you'll learn about a simple set of tools which will help you both easily and quickly capture information about your system, your users and anything else you want. All into a clean and simple logging system.

If your FileMaker solution doesn't currently have any type of error handling built in, there may come a day when you need to know what's going on. Especially when things don't work as expected. You see, here's the crux of the situation. While you can certainly control the behavior of your solution and how things work on the inside, you can't control the external operating system and other aspects beyond the guts of your own solution.

What this means is your Export Field or your Import Records script step may break on one given client for some reason or another. You've also built logic into your solution in which inevitable dependencies exist. If script A must run successfully, in order for the follow-on script B to run as well, you need to trap for any possible errors which may happen within script A. This is when you need your own error handling for your solution - beyond FileMaker's error handling for it's own environment.

Since error handling is one of the more boring aspects of programming, it's beneficial to have an easy-to-use and quick-to-implement system which can be added to any FileMaker solution. This technique file and video provides just such a solution!