CODEWITHSUNDEEP
filemaker
Tom
Tom

Reputation: 2873

FileMaker auto-generate buttons and fields for all/some fields of the record?

I'm writing a data-sync/merge solution in FileMaker where I have two data sources and compare/merge them.

That means I have a number of tables and each with a number of fields.

I have for a testing field built my logic and a layout so that FM shows me when the local and remote data source are different and shows me two buttons to let me choose which data to merge into the other set.

I could, of course, manually replicate all the formulas and buttons for all fields in all tables, but that would be insane. Is there a way to tell FileMaker "use this layout and script steps on the buttons for all fields, changing the names of the fields as you go" ?

Or, in other words, I have two fields and two buttons. Let's call them DataA::field and DataB::field. I have a layout that shows them side-by-side. That layout has two buttons with attached logic to show the buttons only if the field values are different. Button A has a "single step" formula that says "set field value of B to A" and button B has a formula "set field value of A to B".

Is there a way to replicate those buttons and their logic to all the fields in my table without doing a lot of manual work ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 448

Answers (1)

MrWatson
MrWatson

Reputation: 516

The answer is YES!

You need...

fmWokMate Logo

fmWorkMate

[Makes your FileMaker work]

fmWorkMate is a free Power Toolbox for FileMaker Developers from www.mrwatson.de (that I have written over the last 10 years or so).

I use fmWorkMate myself to do exactly what you are doing! In my case I'm syncing fields between tables of my FileMaker solution and embedded ESS tables, but the process is the same... make one field / bit of code... and then automatically generate ('multiply') the rest.:-)

So, how?

First up download and install fmWorkMate - This is actually the trickiest part of the process, since the latest version is yet to be published (and I will correct this once published)

  • If you use Mac OS < Catalina you can download the fmWorkMate Bundle from the downloads page
  • If you use Windows you'll need to download the old Windows version from the downloads page
  • If you have anything else, or have any troubles, contact me, and I'll get the tool out (at last) or to you (at least)

Here are several examples to illustrate how you can use fmWorkMate to do what you wish:

The above here does not answer the question directly, rather shows how to replace fields A and B with fields C and D.

The examples are nonetheless useful and illustrative as they stand, and the techniques build on each other.

I have added example 4 as the full answer to the question below.

Example 1: From your two Buttons with A and B, create two similar buttons with C and D

In Theory:

  1. Copy your buttons out of FileMaker (CMD+C / ctrl+c)

  2. Convert the FileMaker objects to editable XML with fmCheckMate

    • Open fmCheckMate
      • Open fmWorkMate
      • Choose the fmCheckMate tool (or press CMD+2 / ctrl+2)
    • Press the button [Convert Clipboard FM ⭤ XML]
      • Or press CMD+2 / ctrl+2
      • Or press CMD+OPT+C / ctrl+alt+c)
      • And if you are not automatically changed to the XML editor view...
      • Press the edit button (or CMD+3 / ctrl+3) to change to the XML-Edit view
      • Or set up fmCheckMate to always switch to the XML editor:
      • fmCheckMate > Settings... > XML editor > Small editor)

  3. Find and Replace text in the XML as needed

    • Replace field A with field C
      • Click in the [F]ind field (or press CMD+F / ctrl+F)
      • Type the name of the field you want to change A
      • Click in the [R]eplace field (or press TAB or CMD+SHIFT+F / ctrl+shift+F)
      • Type the name of the field you want to change to C
      • Replace all occurrences:
      • Press CMD+OPT+A / ctrl+alt+A
      • Or (on newer versions of fmCheckMate) Press the [R] button
      • Or (on older versions of fmCheckMate) Hold ALT and press the [R] button
    • Replace field B with field D
      • Repeat with B and D

  4. Convert back to FileMaker objects

    • Press the [-> FM] Button (or press CMD+OPT+V / ctrl+alt+V)

  5. Paste into FileMaker (CMD+V / ctrl+V)

Voilá!

(Or rather - oops - did we break it?)

In Practice:

For the particular example you have given - using only one-letter field names A and B - the above will break the XML and not work - because the search and replace is across the entire XML, and the letters A and B appear in various places throughout the XML and replacing them will make the XML unreadable.

However, 99.9% of the field names you will actually be replacing will be quite unique and it is turns out to rarely be a problem.

For example, if your fields were named Previous value and Current value and you wanted to change them to Previous event and Current event that would be no problem at all.

Note, however, that just replacing value with event would (probably) break the XML as well, since value is (highly likely) the name of an XML attribute too. In general: Avoid using single word search words like name, id, Layout,.

[And, of course, the table names DataA and DataB would work fine as they are unique/non-conflicting with XML tag and element names.]

Example 2: Multiply a bit of code for multiple fields

Let's say you have a list of 10 fields you want to sync:

CustomerName
Company
Street
HouseNumber
City
ZIP
Country
Item
Quantity
UnitPrice

How can we produce code for these 10 fields in a fraction of the time?

  1. Write the code for your first field

  2. Multiply your code

How?

First prepare fmTextMultiplier:

  1. Start fmTextMultiplier

    • Open fmWorkMate
    • Choose the fmTextMultiplier tool
    • If necessary press [New] (CMD+2 / ctrl+2) to get an empty record

  2. Paste your field list into the empty Replace field

    • => Note: The first line appears in the search field

  3. Press the button [Don't duplicate original]

    • => The first line is removed from the replace field

=> fmTextMultiplier is ready to go:-)

Then

  1. Create some code for field 1 - e.g. the field named CustomerName

  2. Multiply the code

    • Copy the code out of FileMaker (CMD+C / ctrl+c)
    • Paste the XML into fmTextMultiplier
      • Click in the fmTextMultiplier Text field
      • Select Edit > Paste FileMaker Clipboard -> XML (or press CMD+ALT+V / ctrl+alt+V)
    • Click [Multiply Text x Values] (or press CMD+5 / ctrl+5)
    • Click [-> FM] (or press CMD+6 / ctrl+6)
    • Paste your code back into FileMaker

  3. Check + tweak your code as necessary

    • For example, you might want to correct the field data types.

The best thing is, this same method works for field definitions, layout-fields, buttons, script steps, scripts, whatever!

Once you have set up fmTextMultiplier once you can use the same multiplier function to multiply all the different bits of code around the fields.:D

Example 3: Generating a Series of Fields

Say you are building a calendar and need a series of fields to hold the days:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30
Day 31
Day 32
Day 33
Day 34
Day 35
Day 36
Day 37
Day 38
Day 39
Day 40
Day 41
Day 42

Gee, this is going to be hard work!

Nope!

We shall use fmTextSeries to generate the series automatically and fmTextMultiplier to multiply the Day 1 code.

  1. Generate the list (series) of field names you need using fmTextSeries

    • Start a fresh fmTextSeries
      • Open fmWorkMate
      • Choose fmTextSeries tool
      • Press New if necessary
    • Enter the following values into the dialog and press OK
      • Text: Day 1
      • Times: 42
      • Ìncrement: 1
    • => The series is already on your clipboard, ready to paste!

  2. Prepare fmTextMultiplier

    • Go back to fmWorkMate (via the standard 'back' navigation):
      • Click the mrwatson logo
      • Or press CMD+1/ ctrl+1
    • Start a fresh fmTextMultiplier
      • Choose the fmTextMultiplier tool
      • Press New to start a new multiplication
    • Paste the generated field names into the Replace field
    • Choose [Don't duplicate original]

  3. Multiply your code as in Example 2 above

And repeat for any other such fields - or indeed for any code you need (e.g. Day 1 Event Summary field, Calendar Reset script, Calendar picker layout, ...)

Example 4: Changing direction of Set Field[ DataA::field ; DataB::field ]

So,...

  • You have a script step (or a button with a script step - or even multiple buttons/steps) that sets 'field A' to 'field B' (or, in your case, a field in table DataA to a field in DataB)...
  • And you want to change the direction?

Easy! Use a fmCheckMate XSLT transform to swap the source and target fields around!

How?

Additionally to fmWorkMate and fmCheckMate (see above) you'll need the fmCheckMate XSLT library:

Once you have copied the fmCheckMate XSLT folder to your documents folder:

  1. Copy the buttons (or script steps)

  2. Convert to XML using fmCheckMate (see above)

  3. Press the [T]ransform button

    • If this is the first time using fmCheckMate-XSLT the library is loaded
      • Note: In some (old?) Versions of the library + tool you may see loading errors here - these can be ignored as they are caused by some badly formatted XSLT files, that have no bearing on the further procedure here.

  4. Find and perform the desired transformation

    • Either in list view
      • Browse to or find the Swap Set Field Target And Value function
      • Clicking the function name performs the function
      • Note:
      • Clicking other fields filters the list, so you can reduce the list to browse by
      • Clicking Change to show only Change functions
      • Clicking Script step to show only the Change Script step functions
      • Clicking the headers sorts the column
    • Or in tree view
      • Click [Change]
      • Click [Change > Script steps]
      • Click [Change > Script steps > Swap]
      • Click [Change > Script steps > Swap > Set] -...
      • Click [Change > Script steps > Swap > Set > … > … > Value]
    • You can change views with the [View] button

  5. Convert the XML back to FM

  6. Paste into FileMaker

Lol! The direction has been magically changed!

Example 5: Multiplying code using TWO separate field lists

You haven't asked for this directly, but this example may save you having to ask another question.

If your FileMaker-fields and SQL-fields have slightly different names, fmTextMultiplier can deal with that too.

Say you have these FileMaker fields (in your DataA table)

CustomerName
Company
Street
HouseNumber
City
ZIP
Country
Item
Quantity
UnitPrice

And these SQL fields:

customer_name
company
street
house_number
city
zip
country
item
quantity
unit_price

And on your layout you have the two fields with labels next to each other:

CustomerName [CustomerName]      customer_name [customer_name]

You can multiply these using fmTextMultiplier by using two columns:

First, you need the two columns separated by tabs (or whatever)

CustomerName    customer_name
Company company
Street  street
HouseNumber house_number
City    city
ZIP zip
Country country
Item    item
Quantity    quantity
UnitPrice   unit_price

Set up fmTextMultiplier like this:

  1. Start fmTextMultiplier

    • Opn fmWorkMate
    • Choose fmTextMultiplier tool
    • Press [New] to start a fresh new Multiplication

  2. Paste the above text into the Replace field

  3. Set the Split Values @ char/textfield to {{TAB}} (or your chosen delimiter)

  4. Choose [Don't duplicate original]

Then you can multiply your code in four easy steps

  1. Copy your code in FileMaker

  2. Multiply it in fmTextMultiplier - as described above

    • Paste it into the Text field
      • Click in the field
      • Select Edit > Paste FileMaker-Clipboard -> XML
    • Click [Multiply Text x Values]
    • Click [-> FM]

  3. Paste the code back into FileMaker

  4. Organise the multiplied objects in your layout

OK, so step 4 is not that easy because all of the multiplied layout objects end up in a big pile on top of one another, which is a real pain to pull apart - if you started with 4 separate layout objects, that is.

On the other hand, if you...

  • Group the layout objects together before you copy them

You can then just

  • Paste the pile of objects into FileMaker
  • Align them horizontally and vertically on top of the original group of objects
  • Click somewhere to deselect the new objects
  • Click on the top object
  • Move it down the layout to the correct position
    • You can calculate the position = orig_top + height_between_rows * (total_number_of_rows-1)
  • Select all the objects - including the original one
  • Choose Arrange > Distribute > Vertically

Et voilá... all the rows are in exactly the correct position!

Example 6 - fmTextConverter

There is an also a tool for performing multiple conversions to a text, fmTextConverter.

So If you have some code that operates on your FileMaker-fields, and you want the same code to do the same to your SQL-fields, you can simply

Set up fmTextConverter

  • Open fmWorkMate
  • Open fmTextConverter
  • Press [New] to create a new text Conversion
  • Paste the FileMaker-field-names in the Search field
  • Paste the SQL-field-names in the Replace field

Then

  1. Copy your code out of FileMaker

  2. Convert with fmTextConverter

    • Paste your code into the Text field as XML
      • Edit > Paste FileMaker Clipboard -> XML
    • Press [Convert text now]
    • Press [-> FM]

  3. Paste it back into FileMaker

Note: If one of your field names is a substring of another field name then the substitution will go wrong, if the substring is converted first.

fmTextConverter highlights this problem and offers a sort button, which sorts longer strings to the top, ensuring that the substring is never converted first!

Note too that fmWorkMate is highly optimised for efficient batch work - there are lots of keyboard shortcuts and settings to make repetitive work efficient.

Upvotes: 1

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