I’m working in FM11ADV on Win 7 and I noticed the temp folder go bye-bye when I closed FM. Don’t think you need the FMTEMPFM tag anymore.

I’ve also found that the temporary folder is a great place to store a PDF that I need to create on the fly and paste into a record without cluttering up the user’s desktop.

I could be wrong. Please let me know if I am.

I’ve tried, but when I export the dates to a text file, they still have no Leading zeros in them anymore, just as selecting a date on a layout. It looks like the leading zeros are there (01/02/2010), but when you click on it to edit, the Zero go away, so I’m lead to believe that the filemaker table is not maintaining the leading zero’s in date fields.

Bob

This is embarrassing, but I’ve already used solution # 3 with Microsoft Access to create a text file for inport into Famous Software Database (Oracle). If I had slowed down to think about it, I would have connected the dots. Thanks for connecting them for me!

Bob

FileMaker does not directly support this kind of export format, but you do have several options:

1: Use XSLT. FileMaker can apply an XSLT stylesheet to any exported data, effectively producing just about any text output you can dream up. Unfortunately, you have to know how to write XSLT, which is notoriously complicated. So this is the powerful-built-in-hard option.

2: Use a plug-in. Something like the Troi File plug-in will let you create a file and add text to it using FIleMaker scripts. This is quite flexible and powerful, and often easier for a non-programmer than XSLT. The down side, of course, is that you have to buy and install the plug-in on every machine that needs the feature.

3: Use a hack. You can make a new table with just one text field. Then put one full *line* of your output text in this field, and one new record for each additional line. Then export this file as a Tab Delimited Text format. Since you have only one field, you won’t get any tabs in your output, and FileMaker will automatically put line break after each line for you. The end result is that you can export any line-by-line text format this way. The down side is that you can’t include a Tab character in your field (FileMaker will remove it on export since it is the delimiter).

Often #3 is good enough, and it is quite easy to do. If you need a little more control, #1 or #2 should work.

Hope this helps,

Geoff

It doesn’t seem like Filemake will do this. OR can it? Have you ever tried anything like this before. The export feature is very limited.

Thanks

Bob

Case (
Get(SystemPlatform) = “-2″ ;
“filewin:” ;
“filemac:”
) &
Get(TemporaryPath) & “file.ext

As Justin said, the leading “/” caused the path to be invalid on a PC, but without it, the path was invalid on a Mac. Adding filewin: or filemac: fixes that problem.
The strange thing was that, even without the leading “/”, the path did not work on my PC (Vista OS), however adding filewin: did work.

- Dan

This is a fantastic tip!! Thanks so much.
I can confirm that the file prefix “FMTEMPFM” works on the mac FMP9.
The file is removed on the relaunch of FMP.

Thanks again!
-ian

Ummm… My head hurts. If I understand you correctly, I see no reason why this shouldn’t work. It will be tricky:

1. Store the .fp7 file in a container field.
2. When you need to access it, export it to the temporary folder
3. Deal with file references

For #3, if you need to interact with the file programmatically (open it with a script, run scripts in it from another script, define relationships to it, etc…) then you’ll need to be double-creative because I don’t think you can use variables in the paths of file references. You might be best off exporting the file to a more knowable location like /tmp on Mac OS X and C:\TEMP or C:\windows\temp on Windows. Then you can define a multi-entry file reference that “discovers” your file in one of several possible temporary locations. If you don’t use the Get(TemporaryPath) location, you’ll want to be sure to clean up your mess when you’re done or you’ll leave files lying around.

Anyway, I’ve never done this, but it sounds do-able.

Geoff

Thanks,
Eric

For some reason on my computer, Get(TemporaryPath) results in:

/C:/Path/to/temp/file

the leading / was keeping this from working, deleting it made it work without problems, just though someone else might benefit from this

Justin