FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Branching and Looping in Scripts

Now that you have a basic foundation in what scripts do and how you can run them, it’s time to see some of ScriptMaker’s more powerful features. The script you created at the beginning of this chapter was the simplest kind: It goes through a series of steps from start to finish every time. Sometimes your script needs more smarts. You can add steps to the script that cause it to take different actions depending on the situation (called branching), or make it do the same thing over and over again (called looping).

Branching with If, Else If, Else, and End If

If you’re comfortable with the If and Case functions in calculations (see Global Calculation Fields), then you’ll feel right at home with this topic. You’ve noticed that you often look someone up in the Customers layout, copy his email address, and then go to your mail program to send him an email. You’d like to add a button to the Customers layout that creates the email directly, saving you all the trouble of copying, switching, and pasting.

You can use FileMaker’s Send Mail script step, which is just like the File → Send Mail command, to accomplish this task. First, create the script:

1. Choose Scripts → ScriptMaker, and then, in the Manage Scripts dialog box, click New.

   The Edit Script window pops up.

2. In the Script Name box, type Send Email to Customer.

   When you want to run this script, you choose this name from the Scripts menu.

3. In the list of available script steps, select Send Mail, and then click Move ...