Now that the new Save as XML feature exists, one of the early uses is to plug that information into a free tool from Geist Labs that shows a complete edit history of the file; who modified what when.
All data is processed locally on your machine so no security issues.
It compliments the paid FMComparison tool and provides a different set of information. Someday maybe Claris will have real software configuration management but until then this is a small but useful step in that direction.
Note: the save as XML is now scriptable as well. Having a daily version can prove useful.
You don't need to wait for Claris to have a decent database utility with expected output options.
You can simply open your FMP DB in a real data IDE like "Data Grip" (or other similar), and you can export to CSV, JSON, XML, etc. That capability has existed for years and years.
So how do you get the XML formatted FM code back into script workspace?
Script Workspace's auto-complete and tight typechecking is available outside script workspace?
I need some "edumacation" in how this would work. I know that Dan Shockley has a set of FileMaker Applescript functions that support a lot of FM code interaction, and can be combined with RayCast to do some amazing things, but not had the time to go through the required configuration to get there.
@Kirk If you're interested in doing fm2xml and xml2fm conversions and storing xml snippets that can be pasted into FM on the fly, I made a (very rough) video about this years ago for a friend, and I've had quite a few people find it and use it as a launchpad for what you described since then.
I desperately need to rerecord this video for public consumption with clearer instructions and less muttering, but nonetheless some people have found it helpful for getting started using Dan Shockley's FMClipTools and a textexpander/typinator or your choice.
It's been a gamechanger for me personally, and I think others as well. MASSIVE productivity boost when coding, far beyond copy-pasting from templates. Basically auto-complete for entire script blocks, fields, layout objects, custom function suites, etc.
uh I don't get it, my filemaker save as xml prouce a file where all objects' timestamps are set to the time of saving has xml.
So the tool works, but it's pretty useless to me, since Filemaker (latest 20 version) botches the modification timestamps
Install the free Claris JDBC driver using DataGrip's data source set up. Note that unlike ODBC, JDBC does not require a "manager" to set up a connection on the host computer.
Configure the JDBC connection to your FileMaker database.
That's about it!
You'll get all kinds of useful query aids and INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and, of course, SELECT. I also find that using JDBC, I get at least 3X the performance of FileMaker itself. YMMV.
wow... I spent some time setting up Claris Snippets for RayCast and it works like a charm. Especially when I settled on my hotkeys for creating and viewing the snippets.
I'd put my library into Shortcuts but my muscle memory was hard-wired to using the AppleScript Menu. This looks even better.
Archiving snippets in my applescript setup was easy but I wanted to improve the Recovery process. This tool seems to require a bit extra in the archiving step but makes the recovery much easier.
