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FM19 Add-On Spotlight: Barcode Generator

Barcodes are an essential tool in the modern IT world and being able to add them into your solutions without a plugin or barcode font is a welcome addition to native FileMaker functionality. Our clients use barcodes to identify products they’re selling, to apply a serial number code to a manufactured item, and to build a scannable shipping manifest among numerous examples. Documentation is limited at this stage, so I’m hoping this blog post will assist others in implementing the Barcode Generator add-on.

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Free PBS Logging Add-On

One of the most exciting new features of FileMaker 19 is the ability to create custom add-ons. Beyond the set of default add-ons available with any FileMaker client installation, developers now have the ability to design and deploy custom add-ons through the Claris Marketplace. Before putting our first add-on into the marketplace, we are providing it for free on our blog. You are able to download this add-on by clicking the link at the bottom of this article.

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FileMaker Free Templates

FileMaker has always included starter solutions, simple databases with basic structure that allow anyone to use as a starting point. Through the years and various versions of FileMaker, the solutions have become more advanced and complex to show the new features of FileMaker.

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Selecting Teamwork

Is Portage Bay a software development company that does project management?, or a project management company that happens to do custom FileMaker and 4th Dimension work? Interesting question. I often feel that our success as developers has as much to do with our skills in communications and project management than in the nitty gritty of writing code.

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Insert From URL V2

A few years back, we released a demo to discuss/review the cURL functionality introduced into the “Insert from URL” script step in FileMaker 16. While the cURL implementation introduced some data transfer standards into the FileMaker framework, the real magic happens in the “Insert from URL” script step.

In this new version of the cURL demo, we took the same demo from the cURL blog post and gave it some updates, applied a new theme, and added the feature to send HTML emails using the SMTP(S) protocol introduced in FileMaker 18. We’re also using a navigation module we’ve built that utilizes the JavaScript functionality introduced in FileMaker 19.

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Container Data and the FileMaker Data API

Back when I was learning about the FileMaker Data API, I had trouble finding any information on how container data was handled. Oddly, the upload information in the Help documentation seemed far more complete than the download information, especially considering the download information isn’t even it’s own section. It’s a note in the URL And Data Format notes section. In essence, the note is: You will get a URL referencing the location of the container data, which is somewhere on the internet. You’re welcome. I ended up utilizing the Base64 Encode And Decode functions in a way that I’ll forever keep as a tool in my developer’s toolbox. If you’re not familiar with these functions, they easily convert images into text and vice versa.

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