fmAutoMate

Towards a FileMaker IDE

Do you want to automate more stuff when developing FileMaker solutions?

Do you want to develop FileMaker scripts more easily and effectively?

Do you want to have an IDE in your Script Workspace ?

I mean a really Integrated and Extensible Development Environment

Yes?

Then you need fmAutoMate!

Wouldn't it be great, if you could search and replace stuff in scripts - really easily?

Well now you can!

fmAutoMate extends your script workspace with powerful functionality

fmAutoMate is hosted on GitHub and is open-source. :-D

You can download it from https://github.com/mrwatson-de/fmAutoMate

Getting started

To get your fmAutoMate FileMaker IDE initialised:

1. First off, make sure you have the MBS plugin installed and registered.

2. Download fmAutoMate from Github

3. Open fmAutoMate in your FileMaker Client

4. Press the fmAutoMate button (or Command+2)

=> fmAutoMate has added a powerful context menu to your FileMaker Script Workspace (for this client & session)

To USE the fmAutoMate menu

1. When you are working on a script in the Script Workspace

2. Select some script steps

3. Right-click in the script step area

4. Voilà, you have an extended MBS context menu, full of goodies!

Function Documentation

The functions will (probably) be documented directly on GitHub ... but it is a

Creating your own functions

It's not that difficult to extend the fmAutoMate menu and add your own sub-menus, menu-items and functions.

• Each menu item is simply a record in fmAutoMate.
• And each menu item is powered by a FileMaker calculation
• fmAutoMate has a lot of features to help make this easy (code blocks, parameters, a templating system, auto-completion, in-built MBS-Function help, syntax highlghting, error warnings and a calculation debugger (in FM-Calculation editor) to locate typos)

In other words, you actually write 'fmAutoMate pseudo-code', and fmAutoMate constructs the FileMaker calculation in the background for you.

Create a "Hello World" function

• Create a new record.
• Give your function the name Hello World (& leave the menu name blank for now.)
• Enter the following code in the fmAutoMate pseudo code field:

vMessage = "Hello World" ;

(*:DIALOG vMessage:*)

Install + Test your "Hello World" function

1. Press the fmAutoMate button
2. Press the Edit Test Script button
3. Right click in the script step area and select Hello World

IGNORE THIS ... Docu for later

Menu name: You could type the name of the menu where you'd like the function to appear, but we'll leave this blank so the function will appear at the top of the fmAutomate menu. You can specify submenus by separating the names with a grerater than sign (' > ')

Finally, write the calculation that should be executed when this menu item is selected.

Note:

• The calculation must be a list of variable assignments such that it can be placed in a Let-wrapper "Let([ ] ; 0 )"
• Or in other words you needn't type the Let… bits