FileMaker Go Interapplication Communication
The great thing about FileMaker Pro is it has it’s companion app FileMaker Go. Without FileMaker Go having arrived when the mobile revolution started taking off, FileMaker might have had a hard time staying viable.
Because of FileMaker Go, we can build solutions for armies of mobile users heading out in the field. Even better, we can make easy little applications for ourselves which do cool things.
While the limitations within FileMaker are actually quite small, there will always be some burning desire to have FileMaker Go do something it simply can’t.
In my personal situation, I needed to both crop and enhance a picture prior to saving it into the database. I didn’t want to take a ton of pictures, then go back after the fact, and do my manipulations. If you can fit the steps into your workflow, then the easiest solution is to do it right then and there.
By knowing about, and understanding how to take advantage of inter-application communication, I was able to create the most ideal situation on a mobile device of being able to snap, crop, enhance and store within the smallest number of finger taps possible.
After watching this video, I’m pretty sure your eyes will be opened to how much power is held within the hands of every copy of FileMaker Go!
Comments
great little icon tip
Matt
the SVG icon tip here is completely brilliant... some really enhanced interface possibilities spring to mind..
am more a fan of the easier to read Let ( $$ADDNAME.ON = $$ADDNAME.ON xor 1 ...
Negative coder vs Positive...
You know what's funny. I've always noticed that I lean towards the negative coding style where I've seen a lot of developers who use the positive.
What does that say about my life outlook? ;)
I read it as $$ADDNAME.ON is equal to NOT what $$ADDNAME.ON is currently set to.
But hey, if XOR is easy to read without having to think about it then all the power to those who use it. Paste this one into the Data Viewer. ;P
GetAsBoolean ( "Hard to understand" ) xor not IsEmpty ( "This is" )
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Interesting.
What I've asked myself while watching: could urls also be used to export images from within filemaker to an app like say editoral, where for instance they can be integrated into markdown?
Could that be imaginable?
Getting images out of FileMaker
On iOS, because each application is Sandboxed, you can have FileMaker export locally on the device to a location where another app can pick it up.
It is possible to do though. You would need to use a server side plugin and you could export a file to a third party service. This would in turn make the image "url accessible" by another application. Often times, applications like Editorial use third party API's like Dropbox. This means your server side script would also use the same API.
You would export the image on the server and upload to Dropbox. There are both free and paid plugins which could do this. My personal implementation would be the free BaseElements plugin which provides by exporting from a container and uploading via curl.
Hope this helps.
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Reflector?
Hi Matt, I absolutely love your tutorials. You are a FM genius.
Where can I get reflector? it seems like exactly what I need at the moment but I have looked on the app store and I found nothing.
Find it here.
http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/
-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor
Callback
Hi Matt, has the callback issue you talked about in the beginning of the tutorial been solved?
Has anyone tried to zip before mailing or append a pdf on FileMaker go using workflow or will this also not work because of the sandbox restrictions?
Do you have any other working examples with Workflow?
URL Schemes in Workflow
http://www.geekswithjuniors.com/note/8-reasons-to-love-the-new-workflow-...
Author mentions "Unfortunately, there isn't any encoding helper in Workflow at the moment - forcing you manually encode the URL and making it impossible to encode the runtime value using Workflow alone."
and uses Launch Center Pro to do the encoding job.
I'm looking into it, looks cool.
Script not running
Hey there love the process so far... so for my application i have Filemaker Go Database
You create a record add some details and then have a portal of containers
each row in the portal have a before picture container and a After Picture Container
When i click into the first container it launches the WorkFlow app and runs my workflow
My workflow Takes a picture , resizes the picture , copies to clipboard, opens up filemaker again
my problem is that Filemaker wont run my next script after workflow opens filemaker again...
Cameron Maciel