{"id":7225,"date":"2014-08-07T04:09:05","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T11:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seedcode.com\/?p=7225"},"modified":"2023-02-23T22:47:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T22:47:51","slug":"javascript-functions-filemaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seedcode.com\/javascript-functions-filemaker\/","title":{"rendered":"JavaScript Functions in FileMaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

JavaScript Functions for Speed and Profit<\/h2>\n

The movie below is from one of our most popular demos from “Year in Review” at DevCon 2014. I was talking about what a breakthrough custom functions were back in 2004 and how they unlocked a whole new kind of code-sharing among FileMaker developers. JavaScript functions in FileMaker may unlock even more potential.<\/p>\n

Jason Young introduced the idea of using JavaScript as a calculator–as a library of functions–instead of using it for perhaps the more obvious purpose of building interface elements. (Jason’s original article on this<\/a> can be seen as part 1 of this post.) This gives us a huge opportunity to share and borrow code from the immense catalogue of JavaScript functions and examples.<\/p>\n

\"FileMaker<\/a>
FileMaker engineers start posting custom functions to a public forum: March 2004<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As just one example, we (Jason) rewrote the venerable “namwoB” function in JavaScript. namwoB was the first recursive functions I ever saw and was posted by Andy LeCates back in March of 2004. The title comes from Court Bowman’s name spelled backwards… which is all the functions does, rewriting a string of text in reverse. This simplicity makes it a great way to talk about the different kinds of recursion in FileMaker and what a faster version of the function might look like in JavaScript.<\/p>\n

Our example file shows the same recursive custom functions done as a “stack” recursive function (limited to about 10k loops), as a “tail” recursive function (limited to 49,999 loops), and as a JavaScript function executed in a webviewer and then passed into a FileMaker script.<\/p>\n

Download the example file<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

JavaScript Functions in FileMaker are Fast<\/h2>\n

Looping through 49,000 characters took our tail-recursive custom function almost 3 seconds.<\/p>\n

The JavaScript version of the function looped through 10 times that much text–nearly 500,000 characters–in 3\/10ths of a second.<\/p>\n

And thanks to the improved fmp url in FileMaker 13<\/a>, we can grab the results of functions like these quite easily. The movie below demos this and walks through our example file. It also gives a nice side-effect-demo of how webviewers get their own thread in FileMaker Pro and what that may mean for trying to measure performance.<\/p>\n

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