All posts by David Weiner

JSON has now become a FileMaker developer’s standard method to store and manipulate data in memory. In other words, when you want to create a variable to store anything more complex than a simple string, number, or return-separated list, JSON is the way to do it. If you’re not using it already, you must learn how!

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Today we offer a new minor update to our ever-popular fmMapping Module. If you’re not familiar with it, this is a simple-to-deploy, FileMaker-native module for integrating Google maps with your FileMaker application. It has the ability to map multiple address records on a single Google map, using a webviewer.

The updates today fix a minor bug, provide better documentation of recent changes to Google’s API, and more importantly, remove the need for custom functions. The older version relied on two of them, and they’ve both been replaced with FileMaker 16’s native JSON functions. If you’re running a version of FileMaker earlier than 16, this update is not for you.

You can download the new version HERE, and let us know if you need help deploying it, or if you’re interested in added features.

Note: If you’ve had trouble recently with Google maps being drawn with a darkened background and the words “For development purposes only”, it’s due to changes made by Google:

1. The Google Maps API now requires all requests to be submitted with an API key. Formerly, they allowed a certain number of requests without the need for a key.
2. For the fmMapping module to work correctly, there are two separate APIs that need to be enabled in the Google Maps Developer Console:
   • Geocoding API
   • Maps Javascript API

fmMapping is one of our best-loved modules, and has many cool applications for use. We’d love to know how you are integrating this module into your solutions in the comments section, so let us know below!

FileMaker 18 offers a series of new script steps that add native file creation and manipulation to the developer’s toolkit. The utility of these new script steps will be fully realized once people start using them, but right away I can foresee some great use cases. Write records to a text file for import into another system? Generate an HTML document? Custom local log files? All are possible with these new script steps.

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“Do you even Airtable, bruh”?

FileMaker, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple, is the venerable development platform that’s been improving business efficiency with custom software for more than 30 years. Airtable is a modern database/spreadsheet hybrid, first released in 2012, that’s been well-received in some of the same workplace environments in which FileMaker shines. There is significant overlap in the abilities of both FileMaker and Airtable, so which should you choose, and why?

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How to protect data in fields from being edited, while still allowing the fields to be selected for copy / paste functionality.

One of the features that makes FileMaker so easy to use for data entry is that there’s typically very low friction between the user and the data. Specifically, fields on a FileMaker layout are usually just open and ready for editing. This makes it simple to just dive in and enter data, but the flip side of this low-friction environment is that critical data can sometimes be edited by mistake. As soon as the user moves off the record to “commit” the changes, your data is changed permanently.

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