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 ?
The answer is YES!
You need...
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:
Copy your buttons out of FileMaker (CMD+C / ctrl+c)
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)
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
Convert back to FileMaker objects
Press the [-> FM] Button (or press CMD+OPT+V / ctrl+alt+V)
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?
Write the code for your first field
Multiply your code
How?
First prepare fmTextMultiplier:
Start fmTextMultiplier
Open fmWorkMate
Choose the fmTextMultiplier tool
If necessary press [New] (CMD+2 / ctrl+2) to get an empty record
Paste your field list into the empty Replace field
=> Note: The first line appears in the search field
Press the button [Don't duplicate original]
=> The first line is removed from the replace field
=> fmTextMultiplier is ready to go:-)
Then
Create some code for field 1 - e.g. the field named CustomerName
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
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.
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!
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]
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:
This is in the fmWorkMate Bundle from the downloads page
Or can be downloaded from MrWatson's fmCheckMate-XSLT GitHub repo
Once you have copied the fmCheckMate XSLT folder to your documents folder:
Copy the buttons (or script steps)
Convert to XML using fmCheckMate (see above)
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.
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
Convert the XML back to FM
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:
Start fmTextMultiplier
Opn fmWorkMate
Choose fmTextMultiplier tool
Press [New] to start a fresh new Multiplication
Paste the above text into the Replace field
Set the Split Values # char/textfield to {{TAB}} (or your chosen delimiter)
Choose [Don't duplicate original]
Then you can multiply your code in four easy steps
Copy your code in FileMaker
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]
Paste the code back into FileMaker
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
Copy your code out of FileMaker
Convert with fmTextConverter
Paste your code into the Text field as XML
Edit > Paste FileMaker Clipboard -> XML
Press [Convert text now]
Press [-> FM]
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.
Related
I'm using visual studio code and run into a weird problem. I'm not sure how I got here - I could have accidently pressed a shortcut unknowingly.
I'm trying to select a phrase, link or anything that crosses multiple lines (whether the lines are true lines or due to word wrap). When I select multiple lines, it doesn't automatically select the text at the start and end between the two points. Rather, it just selects the length of text for that line and repeats it in the subsequent lines. See the image below to understand.
Image of issue
As you can see, I am trying to select the words from "the" to the end of "sub". Instead of selecting all the words between the two, it selects the text "the instru" and selects every line with the same amount of characters/length.
In order to show what I am expecting, I have pasted the text into Notepad and done the same thing.
What I am expecting
As you can see, all the words between "the" and "sub" are selected.
If anyone has any idea about how to fix this, I would be greatly appreciative.
Below is a copy of the text if the images don't display.
Follow the instructions below for a click guide to retire and/or add 'School'.
Best practice if there is a change in 'School' structure would be to 'retire' any existing school setup that is no longer required and add the new sub school information. The reason why we don't just edit existing school names (typically) is due to leaving historical data intact.
Try using ctrl+shift+P and typing "Toggle Column Selection Mode"
In MS Word for Windows 10, if you wish to restart page numbering from "1" in the middle of a large document, doing so is currently a 7 step process. For example, let's say you have a document with 4 sections and on each section you wanted to restart the page numbering from "1".
I had two related questions:
Is there a way that, not involving adding any code to the source material, that a user can restart page numbering with 1 or 2 steps as opposed to 7?
If no, did anybody have a script that would allow the functionality described above?
Thanks
You can set the page numbers to restart by right-clicking on the page number, selecting Format Page Numbers... from the context menu and then, in the dialog now opening, entering the desired start value. Seems easy enough to me actually.
If you want to make it simpler you can add the below macro to your Normal.dotm file. You can then add a button to your Quick Access Toolbar that you bind to the macro and the command will be a single click away.
Note that page numbering always works per section, so your document will already have to contain the respective sections.
Sub RestartPageNumbers()
Dim startingNumber As Integer
startingNumber = InputBox("Start page number at: ", "Restart Page Numbers", 1)
ActiveWindow.View.SeekView = WdSeekView.wdSeekCurrentPageFooter
With Selection.HeaderFooter.PageNumbers
.RestartNumberingAtSection = True
.startingNumber = startingNumber
End With
ActiveWindow.View.SeekView = WdSeekView.wdSeekMainDocument
End Sub
I have been working in Notepad++ recently, and last night, spent at least an hour manually selecting many of the same phrase with Ctrl+Select. I needed to select all occurrences of 'yyty' (Just a phrase so I could easily find it), but could not see or find a quick way to do that. I ended up just using the Ctr+Select method, but when doing this 80 times, it gets quite annoying. I need something that will allow me to select a word, then have all matching words become selected (NOT highlighted or marked, as I need to be able to run the column editor tool on the selection to auto-number all of the selections) automatically (by automatically, I mean after clicking something to run the auto-selector). I am willing to install a plugin for NP++ if needed.
When a form text field is inserted in a Word document, the grey shaded length is about 5 characters long. How can this length be increased?
Allthough it is a rather crude measure (and I don't recommend it), you can set "Properties -> Default Text" to as many blanks as you want the size. But this comes for a price: as long as you move into the field by pressing TAB, all blanks are selected and get typed over. When you use the mouse, you click the cursor anywhere into the field and start typing ... so your entry might be pre and post fixed by a number of blanks that you have to trim away in e.g. an exit macro.
I recommend old form fields as the last resort (i.e. there must be a good reason to use them) and would prefer (in that order)
native Word2010/2007 fields (text or Rich text - perhaps not backwords compatible)
legacy ActiveX fields (compatible with W2003)
Legacy (old) form fields
I have some code in Netbeans 6.1 editor that looks like this
fooString(8)
fooString(8)
fooString(8)
fooString(8)
foostring2(8)
foostring3(8)
foostring4(8)
foostring5(8)
foostring6(8)
foostring7(8)
foostring7(9)
foostring7(10)
foostring7(11)
foostring7(12)
and i want to convert it to
fooString(1)
fooString(2)
fooString(3)
fooString(4)
foostring2(5)
foostring3(6)
foostring4(7)
foostring5(8)
foostring6(9)
foostring7(10)
foostring7(11)
foostring7(12)
foostring7(13)
foostring7(14)
Is there a way e.g with regular expresions or anything else to do the job?
Thank you
Do you want to do this programmatically? If not, then I'd do the following
Use regular expression to insert a tab around the number so (8) becomes (\t8\t)
Copy this to an Excel sheet. The tab would arrange the numbers in a separate column i.e. excel will look something like this.
A B C
foostring( 8 )
foostring1( 8 )
foostring2( 8 )
etc.
Now change the values in column B. Just type 1 and 2 in the first 2 rows and drag down to fill the rset of rows.
Copy back to netbeans editor and remove the tabs inserted in step 1.