#stuart gripman

FileMaker Function of the Week: Day Functions

The Day Functions are a set of three very handy, built-in FileMaker functions, which, when combined with a few other functions, add the ability to manipulate the day portion of a date:

The Day (Date) function hands back the numerical date of the date in its parameter. Put like that, it probably sounds a bit useless. If you’re putting a date in the parameter, you already know the number of the day…

FileMaker Length and Position Functions

  A nice example of using text functions to isolate data from a field by Stuart Gripman of FullCityConsulting:

The past few posts have covered an array of text parsing functions. There are countless scenarios where you may need to manipulate text in FileMaker, but the two I most often encounter are data migration and data grooming. I don’t know how many times I’ve been tasked with taking a…

  Something new to learn over at FullCity Consulting:  a way to use the Sign function to optimize code:

How about a real-world example? We can use Sign in combination with our friend the Choose function to generate a message to appear on an invoice or statement. This calc will show an appropriate message whether the customer owes you money, you owe the customer, or the two parties are even.

I’…

Let me Count the ways to use this function

  The Count function is a scripting staple for FileMaker developers, and it is used in a variety of ways, usually as a way to count related records as some sort of a test.  But as Stuart Gripman points out, it is really handy in the same table, as well:

Countsimply tells you how many valid, non-blank values are present in the field or fields you specify. You may string together as many fields as…

What is GetNthRecord and how do you use it?

  Stuart Gripman’s post on GetNthRecord explains the function better than any other I’ve ever read, and the examples are clear cut and straight forward:

This is exactly as straight forward as it seems. Replace fieldName with the name of a field in the local table and recordNumber with any number (within the total number of records in the found set) and you’ll get the value of that field. Consider…

FileMaker: refresh and conditional formatting | Clickworks

I had to read this post twice to understand it, and liked it once I got it through my head. Here’s the scenario:  Many times a client will want to select multiple line items in a portal and then run a script with the chosen set of related records.  Or maybe just to make it easier to see the selected records.  Either way, the final result is a series of selected portal items highlighted and thus…

FileMaker Function of the Week: TextStyleAdd

Stuart Gripman, of FullCityComputing,delves into TextStyleAdd, a function that let’s you apply text formatting via calculations.  I’ve not yet found a use this function as most of the time text is formatted on the layout, but never say never:  The one time you need it, it will be indispensable.  I do see one good use:  If users copy and paste formatted text into a fields and need the formatting…

GetContainerAttribute: This function has 35 different arguments that you can send to it to get specific information about the item in a container field.  FullCity Consulting gives us the use of the few of the more fun ones, and the full list is below:

New in FileMaker 13, and previously fawned over in this very blog, is the GetContainerAttribute function. Prior to this, when you dropped a file in…