Training day for MBS Filemaker Plugin

The people at denkform.de are hosting a training for our MBS Filemaker Plugin. So if you want to spend a day with us learning about our plugin, please join us.

We make a guided tour and show you a couple of highlights and examples. Talk about what you can do and how you do some things. Later we will implement a couple of things in sample databases like the Audit function. Also download and upload with CURL is a good topic. We will look into the webviewer extensions and fill a sample form. Next we will do some image editing and writing a report into a Excel file.
Finally we have plenty of time for questions.

This event is in German (english event is also possible).
We meet 6th February 2014 at 9:30 am in Denkform office. Cost is 70 Euro (+VAT) and you can buy a 5 seat license for additional 70 Euro (+VAT).
You can register on the denkform website. After the event, there is the regular meeting which everyone can join for free and have dinner with us.

Other dates for similar events are: 8th May 2014, 7th August 2014 and 6th November 2014.

Tip of the day: Map Links on Mac and iOS

As described on Apple's website you can use special links to open Map app on Mac and iOS. For example here are two links:

http://maps.apple.com/maps?q=Nickenich
http://maps.apple.com/maps?daddr=Berlin&saddr=Paris

So the URL always begins with http://maps.apple.com/? and you add parameters. Like q for a simple search. You can use saddr and daddr to provide source and destination address for a route. You can include type of map with t parameter with "m" for map, "k" for satellite and "h" for hybrid.

Those URLs work fine on Mac desktop and iOS devices with FileMaker, Xojo and Real Studio.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.0pr5

New in this prerelease of the 4.0 plugins:
  • Added PDFKit.Print, PDFKit.ResetPrintSettings, PDFKit.SetPrintSetting and PDFKit.GetPrintSetting for printing/faxing PDF files on Mac OS X.
  • Added DynaPDF.CMYK and DynaPDF.RGB functions to help calculate colors.
  • Rewrote DynaPDF.HighlightPattern. Now with case insensitive option.
  • Added DynaPDF.GetCompressionLevel, DynaPDF.SetCompressionLevel and DynaPDF.WebLink.
  • Added JSON.GetObjectName and JSON.GetObjectSize.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

FileMaker DevCon 2014 in San Antonio - Registration opened



Just registered as a exhibitor to present our MBS FileMaker Plugin in San Antonio. I hope I see you all there!
Form 28th to 31st July 2014 in JW: Mariott San Antonio Hill Country Hotel.

PS: Just got confirmation: We'll have an extra session about MBS Plugin there :-)

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.0pr4

New in this prerelease of the 4.0 plugins:
  • Added Hash.SHA256.HMAC, Hash.SHA512.HMAC and Hash.MD5.HMAC functions.
  • Added Process.IsRunning to check if a PID is valid or a process with a name or bundle ID exists on Mac.
  • Added WebView.PrintToFile function to print PDF on Mac OS X from webviewer.
  • Added shouldPrintBackgrounds option for WebView.SetPrintParameter to disable background printing.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Connecting to a Firebird database using Xojo, Real Studio or FileMaker

If you need to connect to Firebird, you can use our MBS SQL Plugin. First you need to set option on SQLConnectionMBS: The kOptionLibraryFirebird option must point to the name/path of the firebird library file, e.g. fbclient.dll. Next you connect to the database. Connection string for a local database is simply the file path like "C:\webfakt\daten\webfakt.fdb" in our sample. The username and passwords must be set, e.g. "SYSDBA" and "masterkey". Now call connect method and pass connection string, username, password and the client which is kFirebirdClient.

Now when you do queries, the plugin will ask firebird library to provide strings in unicode. For that the database must have a character set defined. But what happens if none is defined? In that case the try to convert the guessed character set to Unicode will destroy probably the umlauts in the text. The solution can be to cast the encoding like this: CAST(FIRMA as varchar(100) CHARACTER SET ISO8859_1)

So for each field we select, we redefine the datatype with a cast operation and fix the encoding. On the long run the database encoding should be defined to fix this and have the plugin automatically provide correct strings.

PS: Same works in FileMaker with our MBS FIleMaker Plugin and the SQL functions.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.0pr3

New in this prerelease of the 4.0 plugins:
  • Added DynaPDF functions for bookmarks.
  • Changed functions creating or opening files to return more detailed error messages with error number from OS and if possible a describing text.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

Tip of the day: Find network interfaces by name

We had this week the issue that we need to find a NetworkInterface object for a network interface based on the name. As NetworkInterface class does not have a property for that, we use our NetworkInterfaceMBS class to build a mapping from IP address to actual name. It works well here and I think this code maybe useful for you. Beside name, it also allows to use any IP or MAC address to specify the interface.

Function FindNetworkInterface(name as string) As NetworkInterface name = name.trim if name.len = 0 then Return nil // search by IP/MAC dim u as integer = System.NetworkInterfaceCount-1 for i as integer = 0 to u dim n as NetworkInterface = System.GetNetworkInterface(i) if n.IPAddress = name or n.MACAddress = name then Return n end if next // use MBS Plugin to build a mapping dim interfaces() as NetworkInterfaceMBS = NetworkInterfaceMBS.AllInterfaces dim map as new Dictionary for each n as NetworkInterfaceMBS in interfaces dim IPv4s() as string = n.IPv4s dim IPv6s() as string = n.IPv6s for each IPv4 as string in IPv4s map.Value(IPv4) = n.Name next for each IPv6 as string in IPv6s map.Value(IPv6) = n.Name next if n.MAC<>"" then map.Value(n.MAC) = n.Name end if next // now search interfaces by name, IPv4 or IPv6 for i as integer = 0 to u dim n as NetworkInterface = System.GetNetworkInterface(i) if map.Lookup(n.IPAddress, "") = name then Return n end if if map.Lookup(n.MACAddress, "") = name then Return n end if next End Function

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.0pr2

New in this prerelease of the 4.0 plugins:
  • Added DynaPDF.GeneratePreview function to add preview to a PDF in a container.
  • Added functions CURL.AddInputPDF, CURL.GetResultAsPDF and CURL.SetInputPDF for up/download of PDF files.
  • Fixed Clipboard.SetFileMakerData, Clipboard.GetFileMakerData functions for ScriptStep/Script on Windows.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

MBS Filemaker Plugin, version 4.0pr1

New in this prerelease of the 4.0 plugins:
  • Added DynaPDF.ParseContent, DynaPDF.SetBBox, DynaPDF.SetLineJoinStyle and DynaPDF.SetMiterLimit.
  • Added ClearBackground option for PDFKit.GetPDFPageImage to render transparent PNGs from PDF pages.
  • Added FM.VariableList and FM.VariableReset.
  • Improved speed on SQL plugin for reading integers from SQLite databases. Much faster now!
  • Fixed an issue where editing a calender item failed.
  • Changed Window.ShowOverlay so it works on FileMaker 13 Mac.
  • Added Clipboard.SetFileMakerData, Clipboard.GetFileMakerData and Clipboard.GetTypes.
  • Added 40 new field related functions for DynaPDF, so you can fill form fields.
  • Added a few more MovieView methods.
  • Fixed registration issue with FileMaker Server.
  • Added QTMovie functions to query information on audio/video files on Mac. Also good for preview creation, playing sound or getting details.
  • Fixed memory leak with CURL plugin when using FormFinish method.
  • Changed ServerSocket, so you can query on localhost.
  • Added LCMS.ProfileInfo function.
Download at monkeybreadsoftware.de/filemaker/files/Prerelease/ or ask for being added to the dropbox shared folder.

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