RUCKSACK Texnology

Setting up OAuth with Google in FileMaker 16 Posted by William Porter Intended audience: Intermediate to Advanced FileMaker developers Date of publication: 2017-June-06 Updated: 2018-June-06 One of the many exciting features in FileMaker 16 (released May 2017) is OAuth or Open Authentication. Open Authentication allows users to connect to a FileMaker database after authenticating with an external (non-FileMaker) account. At the present time, FileMaker supports OAuth through Google, Amazon and Microsoft. If you're a developer there are two main questions to answer. First, should I do this? And second, how do I do it? I'll answer the first question later. It's important. But the other question-- How  do I setup OAuth?--is answered in the attached document. I wrote this tutorial with the help of my friend and colleague Taylor Sharpe of Taylor Made Services , also here in Dallas. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to get your users authenticating in...

The concept The basic trick behind virtual lists is the wonderful GetValue() function. GetValue() takes two parameters: A list of return-delimited values A number specifying which value in the list to get For example say you have a field in a single record called “List of Values” and it contains the following:    Apple    Boy    Cat    Doorknob    Elephant    Fish When that record is selected, GetValue ( MYTABLE::List of Values ; 4 ) will return “Doorknob”. The brilliant idea is to replace the list of values stored in a field with a list in a global variable . The basic implementation, part one Create a table called VIRTUALLIST. In it, define these two fields: VALUE NUMBER: a number field Value_calc: calc field returning text value, = “GetValue ( $$VALUES; VALUENUMBER )”. Make sure that this value is an unstored calculation. Go to the layout for the VIRTUALLIST table and create s...

In version 2 of Acquittal, our criminal defense case management app, we're doing some nifty stuff with windows, and that means we're finding out that even in FileMaker Pro 15, we still don't have quite all the tools we'd like for managing windows.  One problem is how to trap for the possibility that the user has switched into fullscreen mode. The other problem is how to get out of it. Is this window in fullscreen mode? This one's not too hard. This calc formula seems to do the trick: Get ( WindowHeight ) = Get ( ScreenHeight ) and Get ( WindowWidth ) = Get ( ScreenWidth) That will return true if the window is in fullscreen mode, false if it's not. Why does this matter? Because there are certain things that you can't do with a window if it's in fullscreen mode. In Acquittal, for example, there are times when we want to generate a second "sidecar" window, then display the main and sidecar windows side-by-side. Can't do it if...

Will Porter's review of Airtable is online now at Macworld: http://www.macworld.com/article/3036505/software/airtable-review-a-drop-dead-easy-relational-database-management-system.html Rucksack TeXnology clients may be very interested in Airtable. It's a relational database management system that has many advantages. It's free to get started (and possibly free to stay with). On computers, it runs in any web browser in pretty much any operating system. On smart phones, at the moment it's available only for iOS devices, but an Android app is in the works and coming soon. How's Airtable compare to FileMaker? FileMaker is a  much  more powerful tool: not just a more powerful RDBMS, but a much more powerful application development system, that is, a more powerful user-interface builder. But surprisingly often, you don't need the user-interface tools that FileMaker provides. You just need to store data for later retrieval. In that case, Airtable may beat the...

N.B. The info in this article applies only to FileMaker 13 and 14. The problems that I complain of here may disappear, indeed, I hope they will disappear, in a future maintenance update to FileMaker 14. This info is good as of 5-20-15, but if you're reading this months later, check to see if the problems haven't since been fixed. Written a database solution in FileMaker 13 or 14 that you are deploying on iOS devices, and want to distinguish double-taps from single-taps? For example, would you like a single tap on a record in list view simply to select the record, while a double-tap selects the record and views it in form view? Me, too. So the way you're supposed to be able to do this is pretty straightforward (although it involves a little arithmetic). FileMaker Pro provides the basic tools in a layout script trigger OnGestureTap  and a function Get(TriggerGestureInfo) . In layout mode, you enable the OnGestureTap script trigger for the layout...

I myself didn't completely "get" the navigation layout part at first. In this post I want to clarify a few things about the benefits of this new feature. The new navigation layout part in FileMaker Pro 14 and FileMaker Pro 14 Advanced differs in two significant ways from the header/footer parts we've had since forever (and which we still have in 14): Navigation parts don't zoom Navigation parts don't scroll out of sight Well, it's a little messier than that, in reality. Let me elaborate on the messiness of it first, since the messiness may have some impact on why navigation parts took me a day or two to "get". First potential confusion: objects in navigation parts don't zoom, but they are not completely inflexible. If you grab the edge of the window and make the window wider (I'm not talking about zooming the content, I'm talking about actually enlarging the window) then any objects in a navigation part that are anchored to...

There is a significant mistake in my Macworld review of FileMaker 14 , published yesterday. I spent a fair amount of time getting to know the new navigation layout part and in the process, coming to like it quite a bit. As I said in the review, at first glance, it looks like a duplicate of the header or footer layout part, but it's not. At the end of the relevant paragraph, I wrote this little summary: I expect that FileMaker 14 developers will soon start using the navigation part for UI widgets like buttons, and will leave headers and footers for printed reports. I thought hard about the new navigation part; but I didn't give quite enough thought to how the old layout parts will and will not be affected by the new one. The truth is, you will still want to put column field labels (on a list view layout) in a header part, so that they zoom with the body part. (This would apply to footers as well if you put any objects down there that need to stay aligned with the fields i...

Just discovered quite by accident that I can now zoom text in Chrome on the Mac (version 42) by double-tapping with two fingers . I gather this may have been added a little earlier this year but I only just noticed it. Anyway, that eliminates the last reason to keep using Safari, for me, anyway. The other major advantage of Chrome is what Chrome calls "presentation mode". This provides  true full-screen browsing , that is, the ability to fill the display with the contents of a single tab without menus, the bookmark bar, the location bar or visible tabs. Safari (version 8.0.5) can't do it at all. Opera Beta can do it, but does it badly. In Opera, once you hide the location bar, you can't type Cmd-L to enter a new URL. Presentation mode doesn't mean a lot to me on my iMac's big display, but on my 11" Macbook Air, getting rid of everything but the content area really makes a difference. I'm getting closer to my dream: a world where all my hardware co...

I hesitate even to bring this up, because this is Dangerous Knowledge. When you create a new FileMaker database, FileMaker gives you a default login account, with a default name and password. I wish it didn't and in my opinion, it shouldn't. But it does. So here's what you need to know: Never, ever leave that default account enabled. When would this matter? If the database is stored on your computer and never shared with anybody, keeping the default account enabled means anybody who can get into your computer, can open the database — as developer. Now, this isn't really as big a deal as you might think, because they could do this even if you didn't use the FileMaker default login account. (Hint: Password crackers.) That's one more reason why you need to be careful about the security of your computer. But God forbid the database is hosted on a server that is configured for remote access! In that case, physical access to the server is irrelevant. Any Int...

I don't remember exactly when I started writing for Macworld. More than a decade ago. I reviewed the last six or seven versions of FileMaker Pro for Macworld, but they asked me to do a lot of other stuff, from short reviews to feature articles, about a range of subjects: email apps, calendar and task management apps, photography software and hardware, and a lot more. My work as a freelancer was not been terribly lucrative, but I enjoyed it immensely and I've always been proud to be associated with them. A good bit of the credit for any value my articles for Macworld might have had goes to my editors. In the last couple of years I've worked with a couple of really good editors at Macworld. One of them, Roman Loyola, was among the senior editors who today find themselves looking for work. Roman improved everything I ever submitted to him and he was a pleasure to work with. If you're looking for somebody with remarkable skills as a writer, editor, and technologist, look ...

It's been a bit of a struggle but Rucksack Texnology has finally found a permanent home — for the website and for the blog. Visit us here: http://rucksack-texnology.com The blog is located within the website, here: http://www.rucksack-texnology.com/blog Hallelujah!!

This post assumes you're using CMAssistant 8.1. Not too many of our licensees have upgraded to 8.1 yet, so I'll make a note where you might need to make adjustments for versions of CMAssistant going back to 6.5 or so. So, here's the problem. You want a list simply of the location names and addresses for a route in your current delivery system. Here's how you do it. 1. Find the route's current deliveries I am assuming you want to get location info for a current  route. There are several ways to do this. Perhaps the easiest way to do it is to start in ROUTES. Find the route you want by name and go to form view. In the Run Dates tab of the details box on the right, click on the go-to-related-records (">") button in the Delivs column for the first row. Note the delivery date. That ought to be the most current delivery set for that route. The run dates tab of the details box in ROUTES (CMAssistant 8.1). This button (circled in the scree...

FileMaker Inc announced today the release of an update for FileMaker Server 12 (standard and advanced) that brings the version to 12.0v6: more info here . The main benefit of this update appears to be compatibility with Mac OS X v10.9 "Mavericks". If you're using FileMaker Server 12 on a hardware running Mac OS X v10.9, you should download and install the update. (1-21-14)

I spend a lot of time in my FileMaker Pro databases, and I know many of my clients do, too. When you're opening and closing the same databases a dozen times a day, it's nice to have time-saving shortcuts to those files. There are basically two ways to create a shortcut. You can save the file as a "Favorite" inside FileMaker Pro; or you can save it as a shortcut or alias on your operating system desktop. FileMaker "Favorites" To save the file as a Favorite inside FileMaker Pro, first open the database. Then, in FileMaker Pro 13's menu, go to File > Open Favorite > Add Current File to Favorites . From that point on, the file will be in your favorites list and you can open it by using the same "Open Favorite" menu. Favorites are terrifically handy and I encourage you to give them a try. Creating a shortcut/alias on your desktop or in your OS X Dock It's just a little trickier to save the file as an alias on your desktop or ...

In my family, we decided to do Secret Santas this year. My wife and I have three daughters, and the two older daughters got married in the last year, so there are seven of us in the immediate family. We all agree that Christmas is really about something rather more important than shopping or gift-giving, and we agree that keeping it simple is a good idea. So somebody said, How do we do this? Although we're all in Dallas, we weren't together on the day that this decision was made and weren't going to be all together until Christmas day, so writing names on paper and drawing them from a hat wasn't going to be practical. Without thinking, I said I could build a database that would make make the Secret Santa assignments and email them out anonymously. My wife looked at me like I was crazy (which, as it happens, she knows me to be). The first concern she voiced had to do with security. She worried that I was going to know who all the Secret Santas were. I assured here th...