Software craftsmanship is an approach ...

I've included the following for my brothers and sisters who work to bring FileMaker development into the enterprise organization. In such settings, the developer is often the target of opposition from multiple fronts and our key weapon in fitting the good fit is ... delivering damn good databases that our customers love.

Cheers,
Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP

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To learn more about this topic, click the the source attribution link found below)

According to some, "Software craftsmanship is an approach to software development that emphasizes the coding skills of the software developers themselves. It is a response by software developers to the perceived ills of the mainstream software industry, including the prioritization of financial concerns over developer accountability."

Software craftsmanship is all about putting responsibility and pride back into the software development process.

Source - scrumalliance.org - Software Craftsmanship and Empowerment

A READER ASKS: FileMaker Text To XML And Illegal Characters

From Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

A READER ASKS
I created a calculation field in FileMaker that concatenates multiple fields into one text string that is suitable for ingestion into InDesign for our typesetting department. Things went fine for awhile but they are complaining that the XML is broke because of an ampersand character?

I'm not quite sure what to do next?

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DWAYNE RESPONDS
Yep, I had that happen to me as well. There is a great article that covers XML and how to escape these troublesome characters, here is a link http://www.xmlnews.org/docs/xml-basics.html  .

I wrote a custom function to handle this for me using the following calc,

Let([

name = Substitute ( “the field to fix” ; "&" ; "&" );
name = Substitute ( name; "<" ; "&lt;;" );
name = Substitute ( name ; ">" ; "&gt;;" );
name = Substitute ( name ; "'" ; "&apos;;" )

];

name)

Then I looked at briandunning.com just to see if there was already a custom function out there. There is at least one named EscapeXML ( http://www.briandunning.com/cf/1332 ), ironically the same troublesome characters are substituted on brians page. If you look down into the comments area, you can see that Ibrahim includes the proper calculation down there.

Hope that helps!
Dwayne

More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2013 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

Quick Tip: Multiple Inspectors In FileMaker Layout Design

From Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

BTW UPDATE ... Look down into the comments on this article! Paul Howard adds some tips of his own. Very cool!

When you are in FileMaker layout mode, the “Inspector” is a floating palette of design options and is broken into the three tabs of Position, Appearance and Data. Back when the Inspector was introduced, it caused some pain to developers because FileMaker removed many of the associated menu commands. Time has gone by now and developers adapted, just like they always do.

Still, using the Inspector can be a bit of a velocity drag in FileMaker design. One thing that is a challenge is constantly switching from one tab to another during a simple layout design session.

Putting a field on a layout for example can have a FileMaker developer,

- switching to the Position tab to assign a tool tip
- switching to the Appearance tab to add style to the button text label
- switching to the Data tab to add a pop down value list

and this routine can repeat itself multiple times during an average design day.

Now one way that might help alleviate the tab pain is opening multiple inspectors. This can be down from under the View menu in layout mode and selecing "New Inspector". This way you can have three inspectors ready with each of them on a different tab. This works best if you have multiple monitors and can put your three inspectors on a screen other than your FileMaker layout design screen.

More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2013 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

Easy Example Of The FileMaker Let Function

From Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

The Let function can be challenging the first time you encounter it. The Let Function allows you to use your own variables within the syntax of the function. It can be used to make complex calculations easier because you can reference just about anything as a variable. Today I did a quick Let function to parse out the contents between a pair of parenthesis and realized this is a very easy way to explain how a Let function works!

---

Let([
start = Position ( text ; "("; 1; 1)+1;
end = Position ( text ; ")"; 1; 1);
difference = end - start];

Middle ( text; start; difference))

---

The first variable tells us where the left parenthesis starts (plus one character), the second variable tells us were the right parenthesis ends and the last variables tells us the number of characters between each parenthesis. The position function returns the place where a specified string of text occurs within a search string.

That sets up the last calculation that pulls out the desired data with the Middle function! This function is used to pull a defined number of characters from a text string or field. Unlike the left or right functions, you can define where to start and the number of characters you want to extract. This function is commonly used in text parsing routines, where a large piece of text is broken down and placed into many different fields.

More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2013 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.

A READER ASKS: Customized FileMaker Send Email Messages

From Dwayne Wright PMP, PMI-ACP
Certified FileMaker Developer
WEB: www.dwaynewright.com
EMAIL: info@dwaynewright.com
TWITTER: dwaynewright
YOUTUBE: FileMakerThoughts

A READER ASKS
I'm a novice FileMaker Pro (v8.5/Mac) user, and I was wondering if you might be able to shed some light on my current predicament. I wish to send some e-mails, with addresses already in FMP. There is already a button that opens up Mail and has the e-mail address already in the "To:" field. Now, I have to send about 6400 e-mails (which I don't mind doing each one by one) but I wish to have their first name, as well as a message to them. I know I can select a field, and insert it into either the subject or the message box, but it won't let me add both. I hope that there is some way to have this work, but I am just too inexperienced to solve it.

So, a little simpler:
To: "Applicants::GEN.EMAIL"*
Subject: "My Subject"
Message: "Dear 'Applicants::GEN.FNAME'* , return return 'My Message' "

*these are the cell values in my layout. I basically just need help with having a greeting, their name (it would change with each record) and then my message.

Much appreciated for at least reading this, and I hope to hear back from you!

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DWAYNE RESPONDS
Oh, you are so close to answering this one on your own! You can insert a field into the subject and message ... and ... you can use a calculated value! So you can concatenate any number of fields and literal text strings to craft a unique message to each recipient.

Here you can see the specify calculation option off to the side of the setting for key email information in the Send Email script step.

Here you can see your message as it would appear as a calculated result for the message.

=
More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2008 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

The material on this document is offered AS IS. There is NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY, expressed or implied, nor does any other contributor to this document. WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT ABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMED. Consequential and incidental damages are expressly excluded. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.