Implementing Industrial Barcode Scanners from Zebra
Gonector lets you integrate your custom FileMaker apps with industrial barcode scanners from Zebra to scan your barcodes quickly and reliably even in poor light conditions. Learn how you can easily implement these scanners into your own app for tasks such as inventory counting.
Adding Webhooks to FileMaker is Easy
We have released fmRESTor 19. Even though there were no news in FileMaker Server 19 Data API that would require fmRESTor to be updated, we wanted to bring a significant improvement to you anyway, so here it goes, along with a brief 8-minute step-by-step video on how you can use fmRESTor to add a webhook to your own FileMaker database.
Generate Scalable PDF Barcodes Purely with Calculations
Have you ever dreamed of being able to generate high quality scalable barcodes in FileMaker solely using calculations, with no plug-ins, fast enough in a way compatible with server-side scripts, FileMaker Go and FileMaker WebDirect, and completely free of charge? Your dream has just come true.
Licensing Guide for FileMaker 19
Are you considering buying a new FileMaker license and struggling with choosing which license option is the best one for you? Try to use our license guide, updated for the current licensing terms of FileMaker 19. Or simply contact us and we'll take care of you, worldwide.
New Year with New Test Results
A new year has come and we all hope it will push us forward to better tomorrows. New year also deserves new performance test results, especially since Claris released FileMaker 19.2 just a few days ahead of Christmas. So I used some of the calm holiday time to prepare new sets of tests and discover some new interesting things…
Xgode 2.0 on Steroids
According to our customers. Xgode is the best and easiest to use way to build and push mobile apps made in FileMaker to the users. Now version 2.0, faster, with more controls and better support for the App Store, has been deployed and is ready for you to try out!
Visualize Data with PDF Vector Graphics
Vector graphics can be scaled without any loss of quality or accuracy. That can be very helpful for visual representation of data, such as printed reports or complex structures. Generating vector graphics as PDF in my example is handled solely by 42 custom functions. 100% compatible with server-side scripts, WebDirect, and even FileMaker Go.
Adding links to PDF from FileMaker
As a Claris partner, we resell FileMaker licenses. As an extra benefits, we also provide a nice PDF document with all information about the license, including download links. To generate this document from our FileMaker based CRM, I needed a way to include functional web links in it. So I wrote a custom function that does it, without any plug-ins.
Automated Greenhouse Climate Control
As a little boy I grew tomatoes and some herbs in pots on balcony (because we didn’t have a garden at that time). Over time my hobby evolved into growing vegetables in a greenhouse. Since I also like technology and automation, now many of the repeating processes are controlled by Claris FileMaker, Raspberry Pi, Hardwario, LoRa, Node-RED, etc.
FileMaker 19 Performance Lab and Compatibility
Claris has released FileMaker 19. We have tested all our products and are happy to confirm that they all work fine with the new version, only iOS versions of our plug-ins need to be updated for the new iOS App SDK. Now we are preparing our performance lab to test FileMaker 19 performance and compare it to the previous versions.
Optimizing FileMaker Performance for Working from Home
When most of the world is forced to work from home, many things you took for granted can disappear over night. Speed of the internet is one of them, performance of your business critical apps follows very closely. So let me share a few tips on how you can optimize your FileMaker apps for working from home over the slower-than-usually internet.
Claris Connect integrates CRM with Mailchimp
Claris has recently released Claris Connect. It’s an integration platform provided as a cloud-based service, letting you easily connect many different apps and make the data smoothly flow between them. To show you how it works, I have prepared a short demo using Claris Connect to integrate a FileMaker based CRM with Maichimp.
Xgode just got better
According to Patrick Cranston, there is no better way to build and push mobile apps made in FileMaker to the users. Well, the best way now got even better as we released a new version…
Easily integrate (not only) temperature sensors with FileMaker
If you have a custom software system to run your business, then you probably want to integrate it with everything that’s important to your business. One such example is monitoring conditions in your server room. No one wants to come to the office on Monday only to find out that their servers got burned due to air-condition failure.
RFID and NFC are on the Rise
You may have already seen my hardware integration demo where I combined iPads, iPhones, motors, barcodes, RFID, digital scale, mobile receipt printer, and payment cards. Although everyone loved the automated moving parts built from LEGO, the after-session questions and discussions were actually mostly focused on RFID and NFC.
Life before and after Xgode
We can build native iOS apps with the FileMaker platform but we struggled doing that too often. Xgode has changed this for us, and now it is not an exception when we build a FileMaker based native app more than five times on the same day. Why is the life after Xgode so different from the life before it?
Google Maps become affordable
Since the introduction of WebViewer, Google Maps were quite popular in FileMaker solutions. What many FileMaker developers may have missed though is that in most cases they were using Google Maps API illegally and Google could ban their API key or IP address from accessing the feature at any time.
Perform Script On Server
The idea of being able to off-load time consuming tasks from FileMaker Pro to FileMaker Server is as old as the scripting abilities of FileMaker Pro, which were introduced with the FileMaker Pro 3 release. But it was the FileMaker Server 13 that finally made this idea easy to implement.
Text or Numbers - What's Faster
One of the questions I am getting from time to time since I testing FileMaker performance is whether there is any significant difference between performance of text and number fields, So I tested it and discovered that there is even a case when indexed field can be slower than an undindexed one.
Optimization Madness
In May, I participated in Pause[x]Berlin 2013, a European format of the popular unconference Pause On Error, organized for FileMaker developers by FileMaker developers.. There I presented a session called Optimization Madness focused on optimizing performance of FileMaker solutions.
Why is FileMaker 12 slow?
A lot has been written and said since FileMaker 12 was released about its speed, compared to FileMaker 11. Emotions left aside, if I was supposed to compile all the recent findings into a single brief message, I would say that some people find FileMaker 12 slower than FileMaker 11 while others experience improved performance.
Marvelous Optimization #3 - Faster Imports
This example demonstrates that even a single-step script can be optimized. You just have to think a little bit out of the box... I was showing this as a surprise in my session Marvelous Optimizations at Pause On Error [x] London 2011. I used a sample file with 25 fields and 5,000 records and imported these records 5 times in a row in just 13s.
Marvelous Optimization #2
The second example I was showing in my session Marvelous Optimizations at Pause On Error [x] London 2011 was the script for selecting Random Set of Records. I found this example in the FileMaker Knowledge Base and optimized it to run at least 158 times faster when selecting 10 random records out of 50,000.
Debugging Scripts by Writing to Event.log
This is a fresh story of me spending hours trying to fix a technical issue and accidentally revealing a gold nugget. A few days ago one of my nightly server-side scripts stopped working without any apparent reason. But when I tried to run the script in FileMaker Pro it worked just fine. I really needed a way to debug the script on the server.
Random Set of Records (optimized)
I noticed that one of the articles updated in the official FileMaker Knowledge Base on September 23, 2011 was explaining how to select a random set of records in a FileMaker database. I was wondering how fast the currently recommended technique is and whether I can make it faster with the help of FM Bench.
FileMaker Custom Function for HTML Entities
Just today I needed to decode HTML encoded text in FileMaker. After checking few functions I found one that seemed pretty good. Written in 2009 by Fabrice Nordman and named HTMLencoded2Text, this custom function was converting my imported text OK at first sight.
PHP Debugging & FileMaker Custom Functions Do Exist
I have just read Anders Monsen's post "Read on Mightydata's blog" A Simple Debug Function for PHP at the "Open the Mightydata's blog" Mightydata's blog. My first thought was this is similar to what I have been doing since I learned PHP a few years ago.
Infinite Hierarchy
Last week Hal Gumbert mentioned on Twitter that he was “working on a FileMaker quote to display and edit a BOM ( Build of Materials ) that can go 9 levels deep.” Probably the most efficient and user friendly way to implement this is using a tree view with collapsible/expandable items.
FileMaker PHP Error 7 (Running Out Of Memory) resolved
Yesterday I got so stuck with an issue that I wanted to send a question to a mailing list. But (un)fortunately I sent it from a wrong e-mail address so it did not reach the list. Then, before discovering that I used the wrong e-mail address I actually resolved the issue, so now I can share this for the case it can help someone.
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