Variable Field Portal Sorting

With many native features in Claris/FileMaker, you may end up hitting what you "think" is a brick wall. In this case, I'm referring to the ability of sorting portals. You've only got one checkbox per portal with the options for specifying a selection of fields to sort by. True, you can choose a number of fields to sort by, but, you can't change their order dynamically or allow a user to make any changes to which fields are used.

That is, of course, unless you combine a variety of native features which will allow you to accomplish your desired results for sorting portals. In this video, we take a look at a wonderfully great technique for being able to sort any given portal on any number of fields in either direction and being the masters of our own portal sorting destiny. Need to allow end users to sort portals for maximum effect? Go no further than watching this video and using the provided technique file.

AttachmentSize
VariableFieldPortalSorting.zip1.85 MB

Comments

Thank you for this, Matt. I have been using VirtualSort for years and it works well with a similar approach with a dynamic serach field but using a more advanced scripted solution together with some custom functions. The advantage with that approach would be that everything is specified by script parameters and there is thus no requirement to hard code field names in scripts or custom functions. I combine that with a buttonbar sort indicator technique from you a few years back. It would be interesting to see how these two techniques compares performance wise.

Posted by: athyholdt
Wed, 04/12/2023 - 11:50am

FYI - As it is currently configured, the sort graphics don't show on Windows. It just shows an empty square box. I am using Windows 10 with the latest 19.6.3 version of FileMaker. I have seen this before with other solutions that use graphics from the Mac.

Posted by: dldestwolinska
Thu, 04/13/2023 - 1:15pm

There are custom functions which control which icon is used. I should have tested on Windows, but you can effectively use the following within those custom functions.

Choose ( Abs ( Get ( SystemPlatform ) ) - 1 ; "[mac icon]" ; "[win icon]" ; "[iOS icon]" ; "[web direct icon]" )

-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor

Posted by: Editor
Thu, 04/13/2023 - 2:04pm

A bit delayed of a reply, but no I've not seen the add-on. I don't personally use add-ons very much. I'll have to take a look.

-- Matt Petrowsky - ISO FileMaker Magazine Editor

Posted by: Editor
Mon, 06/17/2024 - 12:23pm

I have implemented this custom function and works great on text fields, but it returns Error when I use a date field.
Is there a change to the custom function for date fields?

Posted by: Stephen Bard
Tue, 08/13/2024 - 10:48pm