If you save your records as a snapshot link then add the location you save that to that in the url field in the events table then you can click on the url in iCal to see those/that record in your solution.

Makes the integration even more powerful.

Now if only I wasn't using using a globals table to interface to selected entities.....

Slick! Thanks for that.

I hear you on the globals.

Back in March 2010, Will Baker from Beezwax posted a globals-aware snapshot link mod to techtalk. He snapshots not the interface record, but a separate table the holds data from his globals (the script he uses for this make such a record, then creates a snapshot link for it). The layout has OnRecordLoad triggers to reload the globals it has stored, etc.

Nice idea, but a bit of work.

Have toyed with the idea of having a 'snapshot' table to do a similar role but not had a reason, other than interest, to explore this further.

That has changed with Zulu. When I have some results I'll post a sample file here.

Got this working in a global context nicely, demo file with explanation available here.

Enjoy!

Tim

Slick! Thanks for posting this Tim.

(I love hearing about this kind of thing from our customers! Very innovative.)

John

Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!

Found a behaviour difference between iCal 3.0.8 (Leopard) and 4.0.3 (Snow Leopard).
In the former URLs pointing to files rather than actual sites open that file. In the latter it just shows you the file in a Finder window.

Have looked at preferences and cannot see anyway to change this.

Anyone any ideas?

Ok all an update.
If an fpsl file is added as an attachment to an iCal event then a click with work as desired. Only problem is that Zulu does not support attachments.

As far as I know this is true for all CalDAV servers, but if not could you look at adding this to the roadmap for us John!

Thanks to Matt Petrowsky ( http://www.filemakermagazine.com/ ) for his input to this.

Tim

Hi people,

I'm preparing a session for the French fmconf in May, and I've made some raw demo material that might solve the problem on the Mac.
What I wanted to do, was to support the fmp7script:// protocol on FileMaker Go ánd on FileMaker Pro and/or FileMaker Pro Advanced 11.

It is not a finalized example, and has been untested, but it tackles the difficult part of the problem: getting iCal to launch the script in FileMaker and pass the parameters supported by the fmp7script protocol.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18762341/iCal%2 ... Helper.zip

3 files. An example event with a sample URL in it, the calendar file with the script, and the FMScriptHelper application.

The FMScriptHelper application has its plist modified, so it registers itself as the URL handler when you place nto the Applications folder.
It's written in AppleScript, and I did not protect the source code, so you can see how things work.
It parses out the passed URL, and calls the FileMaker script in the calendar file.
FileMaker's AppleScript interface does not support a script parameter yet, so I get the parameter string from the script itself, by sending an event back from the FileMaker script to the FMScriptHelper application.
The global field that receives the parameters is easily configurable through 3 variables: file, table and field.
I then parse out and evaluate the parameter so I get everything nicely assigned, including the $variables.

The rest is up to the FileMaker developer. I think this is modular enough to be useful in an existing Zulu development.

Please let me know in this thread if this works for you. By the time I'm presenting the session, I would like to know if this is really a good solution, and not some unstable hack.

Also, as an alternative, the MBS FileMaker plug-in got 2 new functions to handle these URLs. I tested it, and it works rather well. But I wanted to have a free solution, as FileMaker will probably support the protocol in it's next desktop version.

Peter Wagemans

Looks like great stuff Peter!

I'll definitely run through this when I get a chance.

-Jason

Hey Peter,

Finally had a chance to look at this...wild stuff!

Depending on the process, I was thinking you could create new records in the CalendarURL and then have a server side script process them, you've got all the parameters stored in that field.

Tons of uses for this: one off the top of my head is a standardized way to report that the task/event has been completed. Rather than setting up some text rules in the note field that need to be parsed, just hit the URL!

Thanks a lot for sharing this. Gives me a lot to think about!

-Jason

Hi Tim and others, I have found your example today, and it looks great, I am struggling with one element with snapshots, which is if the database is not already open, the "On Open" script step kills the restore of the snapshot link. I have tested this with the URLSnapshotDemo file, and this seems to mirror my tests, it restores the snapshot fine if the DB is already open, but fails if it is closed when the .fpsl is opened.

Am I missing something here?

Best Regards,

Marcus Wilson

Hi Marcus,

Looks like it's the upon record load script trigger: that fires the script "Go To Snapshot" and that's what's killing it as it closes the only window. I didn't get too deep into this, but adding a new window script step after the comments at the top seemed to fix this.

hth,
Jason