Passing parameters to Filemaker Script

Filemaker only accept one parameter when you "perform script". There are many suggestions to pass more than one parameters. Some use custom functions. One of the most noted function is #Parameters. It stores name and value set into a dictionary. Others suggest using "List".

For those who do not use Filemaker advanced, there is no way to create custom functions. For list, if you just pass it a list of values separated by "carriage return". The only problem is that if you passed a blank value, the next value will be used instead. This caused considerable inconveniences.

Some others passes a XML or JSON as parameter and it requires a function to do the extraction. I guess this is the best way to do it. The following is an example of getting the variable value by creating a XML, stored as global value and call the script with node name as parameter.

# Construct a xml for all the variable and values. Store as global variable $$xml
# The passed xml must not contain carriage return just join all the nodes end to end
# The xml constructed must also be escaped to make it valid.

Set Variable [ $pkey ; Value: Get(ScriptParameter) ] 
Set Variable [ $$xml ; Value: Substitute ( $$xml ; "><" ; ">"  & ¦ & "<" ) ] 
Set Variable [ $ccount ; Value: 1 ] 
Set Variable [ $pcount ; Value: PatternCount ( $$xml ; ¦ ) ] 
Set Variable [ $pvalue ; Value: "" ] 
Loop
 Exit Loop If [ $ccount > $pcount ] 
 Set Variable [ $xsearch ; Value: GetValue($$xml;$ccount) ] 
 Show Custom Dialog [ "test" ; $xsearch ] 
 If [ PatternCount ( $xsearch ; "<" & $pkey & ">" ) =1 ] 
  Set Variable [ $pvalue ; Value: Let ( [ $p = Substitute ( $xsearch ; "<" & $pkey & ">" ; "" ) ; $p = Substitute ( $p ; "</" & $pkey &">" ; "" )] ; $p ) ] 
  Set Variable [ $ccount ; Value: $pcount ] 
 End If
 Set Variable [ $ccount ; Value: $ccount+1 ] 
End Loop
Exit Script [ Result: $pvalue ] 

Note that the | symbol is actually the Filemaker "carriage return" sign.

Recent development see another way of passing parameters. This is done by using JSON. Filemaker has added functionalities to read/write the elements of JSON. It makes passing parameters much easier with much less hassles.