FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual

Chapter 15. Advanced Scripting

Being familiar with FileMaker’s lengthy list of script steps, which you saw in the previous chapters, is a great foundation, but putting together a workable script takes practice. Although some scripts are simple five-line affairs, sometimes a script requires a lot of forethought, planning, and organization. FileMaker gives you tools to help you write scripts and troubleshoot them when they aren’t working. Plus, you can organize and document your work as you go. In this chapter you’ll pull these concepts together to learn how to write and manage complex scripts.

Commenting Scripts

When you look at a script someone else created—or you created a long time ago—you can’t always tell what the script does. To help keep things clear, add comments to your script. You add each comment using a Comment script step. This step has just one option: the text of the comment itself. The Comment step is special for two reasons. First, it doesn’t do anything. Second, it appears in bold when you view your script in the Edit Script window. You can see a commented script in Figure 15-1.

Use comments to document anything important about the script. Here are some things you may want to include in a comment or set of comments:

• What the script does and why to use it

• Who wrote the script

• The date the script was written

• The date, if any, the script was last edited

• Who edited the script

• Anything special about how or when the script should be run, like whether only some database users can ...