Search Results for 'bento'

[Brendan]

Hi Todd,

Tap Forms doesn’t have a separate Duration field type like Bento did. It uses a Number field with the HH:MM Number Formatter as you’ve discovered.

However, in version 2.1.1 which I will be submitting to Apple soon, I have fixed this issue. You will be able to enter in your values as HH:MM (e.g. 12:30) and Tap Forms will convert the values to seconds for you. You can use any of the time formatters and enter it in the way you would think. For example 10 hrs, 2 mins, 30 secs. In fact, you could just type “10 2 30” and Tap Forms would automatically convert it to “10 hrs, 2 mins, 30 secs”.

So just hang in there and you’ll have this feature soon.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Todd Green]

I’m trying to create a field that allows me to measure the number of HH:MM that I spend per day on a task. However, no matter what I put in the “Number Format” under Field Properties, it rejects any input that isn’t simply a whole number (presumably seconds). I get an error message that says, for example:

The value “00:15” is invalid.
Please provide a valid value.

I have it set up as:
Field Name: Duration
Type: Number
Mask Field Value: blank
Encrypt Field Value: blank
Auto-increment: blank
Increment by: blank
Default value: blank
Number Format: Time (HH:MM)
Decimal Places: 0
Pick List: <unspecified>
Show Title on List View: checked

Any suggestions? The base form was a Bento 2 template upgraded to 4 and then ported, but I’ve deleted the original field and created a new one from scratch with the same result.

[Brendan]

Hi Todd,

I’m not sure how Bento handles upgrading from version 2.0.5 to 4.1.2 (the latest version), so I can’t speak to that. However, I believe you can just download version 4.1.2 as a 30 day trial which might give you enough time to transfer all your Bento templates over to Tap Forms.

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11182

Thanks!

Brendan

[Todd Green]

Tap Forms only seems able to import Bento templates from version 4. I don’t mind spending the $20 it will cost me to get a Bento 4 license (currently running 2.05) but I was wondering if anyone had gone that route already just to be sure it will work out. My concern isn’t Tap Forms, it’s whether my templates will “upgrade” as necessary and without drama or major changes if I go from 2, to 4, to Tap Forms.

If they’re still not going to look right, I might as well just invest the time in building fresh Tap Form layouts from scratch.

Thanks in advance for any advice or experience others have had trying this already.

[czuch]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for your reply.

Ideally what I’m looking for is that for forms that are text-only like mine, that one can simply visualise them as a spreadsheet-type of grid and move with the cursors around, create new entries simply by going to the next row below (or pressing enter), etc.

As another Bento refugee that appreciates your work this is something that Bento did very well in my opinion, for text-based forms.

See attached screenshot for a Bento view of example entries filled with single letters as an example.

Thanks again,

czuch

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[Glen Chambers]

Hello there

I am a long standing user of Bento and was sad to hear that it wasn’t going to be supportive any longer…… However in came TapForms — Pure class! And the ability to import Bento templates just worked, albeit with a few problems but **VERY** quickly resolved but getting excellent support from Brendan! Literally a reply with in minutes………

Just one question… Encryption.

I have TP installed on an iMac, MBP and iPhone — I 1st installed it (via the Mac App Store) to the iMac, imported my Bento Database and then encrypted the form/database. Then activated iCloud and synced.

I then went to my MBP, installed TF and setup sync — It worked and pulled down the form/database. BUT I could read the records…. I then encrypted this on the MBP.

Isn’t the actual file that’s synced encrypted? I also synod with the iPhone and again could read the files….. then I setup the encryption…

Weird? Is this how it works?

Regards
G.

[David Butenhof]

Ah. And if it snuck out in the demo prematurely, that would probably explain why it may not be working right; and potentially why my round trip experiment failed even without that option checked. Anyway, the mystery may not be solved but the investigation is on hold until I can try with a stable version.

Still hoping I can work through this and get my Bento data transferred to TapForms Demo so I can justify buying everything and switching over. (And again, thanks for having the demo so I can try.) I’ll keep an eye out for the 2.1 version, and you’ll likely be hearing from me again. ;-)

Thanks.

[David Butenhof]

I’ve been using Bento since it first came out, importing from an even more primitive database on the PalmOS device that I gleefully discarded for an iPhone 3G when that first came out. I tried Bento related tables, but didn’t like the interface: and when Bento 4 came out with typed Simple List columns, it provided just what I needed to track things like movie viewings, and a set of stories contained in collections.

And I knew there’d be a risk that moving this data out of Bento might be difficult; but I figured I’d deal with that later. Well, FileMaker decided it was “later”, and I’ve been looking for a way out. When I saw TapForms I thought this might work, but the jury is still out.

My objective is to attempt to import Bento records with simple lists into TapForms as linked forms. My idea was to manipulate my Bento CSV export into multiple CSV forms with generated UUIDs matching the schema used in TapForms export of similar records.

Before going too far on that, I decided to see what TapForms does with its own data. So I modeled my basic data in the Mac TapForms Demo 2.0.1 (400), exported three linked forms, deleted the forms… and then tried to re-import the .csv files.

First, I noticed an oddity in the export of my main Books form. The records have your form_record_id, then Date Created and Date Modified as the first 3 fields; however the .csv file created by TapForms includes the headers for Date Created and Date Modified… but not the data. This causes the re-import to shuffle all the remaining fields.

The documentation suggests that TapForms will recognize the parent_record_id in the “child” forms and re-connect them on import; but even after fixing the skewed columns in the .csv, this doesn’t appear to happen for me. And if I manually re-link the forms, it still doesn’t connect the existing records.

I’m attaching the three .csv files generated by TapForms. Maybe this is a bug. Maybe it’s a limitation of the demo. Maybe there’s something I’m missing in the import procedure. I’m not quite ready to give up yet. Ideas?

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[Alan Wong]

I came from Bento. Transferring the databases to Tap Forms was a breeze. Thank you!

I created a pair of related forms, say Albums and Songs. I can add songs on the Albums form, which is great. But on the Songs form I cannot see which album a song belongs to. Am I missing something? Thanks.

Alan

[Brendan]

Hi Alister,

Oh that sucks. Well there’s nothing I can do about that unfortunately. At least in Bento when you exported, it would also export all the media. And the new Bento Template Import command in Tap Forms for Mac can easily import those, including photos.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan]

Hi David,

Tap Forms can already import your Bento templates without you needing to first export them as a CSV file. If you follow the online documentation it will tell you how to do it.

However, as you’ve discovered, there’s no concept of a Simple List in Tap Forms. Although technically speaking it’s really just a Related Data type thing. I’m not quite sure why Bento has both Simple List and Related Data (Link to Form in Tap Forms parlance).

Tap Forms doesn’t create tables when you add new forms. The table structure in Tap Forms is fixed for the most part. I only update the database schema when I send out a new update. The way Tap Forms stores it’s fields is actually in rows in the database as opposed to columns. This is an area that I would like to improve this year as it’s much faster to fetch from columns in a database than rows. But it was more flexible with rows for my purpose. Although one of the primary reasons I did this also was because with SQLite you cannot delete a column once you’ve created it. You ned to create a new temporary table, copy all the data over to it excluding the dropped column. Sorry for the tangent there.

I would recommend setting up a couple of forms and link them together using the Link to Form field. Add some records to each form and then export them using the Export Records command. Select the “Export Linked Records” option and turn on Field Type Tags.

Once you’ve done that, take a look at the CSV files generated. You’ll see the foreign keys in the CSV file for all the records exported in the linked forms. That’s how you’d have to re-create a CSV file in order for it to be imported into Tap Forms.

If you have some skills with Python then this should be possible. Then you would simply need to import the parent form first, then import the linked form CSV files second. Tap Forms will connect it all up to establish the links again between the forms.

I hope that helps!

Thanks!

Brendan

[Kjetil Håkon Pettersen]

Thank you very much for your verification!

Thanks Kjetil

BTW! TF is a much better DB to work than Fm Bento.

[David Butenhof]

This is the most recent topic I can find on importing linked forms, so I’m going to reply here. (Simple logic.)

I’ve been looking for quite a while for a Bento replacement. Actually, I was looking long before FileMaker dropped Bento. What I wanted was an iCloud sync-ed database that would work on my Mac, my iPhone, and my iPad to keep everything up to date. I never really found anything that met the basic requirements. The closest was probably the venerable old HanDBase; but it doesn’t do cloud sync (which I’d find much more convenient than local WiFi sync), and the Mac client is primitive, ugly, and despite recurring promises virtually unmaintained for years.

And then today I almost accidentally found a recommendation for TapForms.

After spending some time today playing with the Mac demo (thanks for that, by the way!) and reading the forum and documentation, I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re almost there. I think I could use TapForms as I’ve used Bento, with only a few minor inconveniences… and with many advantages (including, not least, supported software, which is always nice).

Except that moving my data from Bento to TapForms would be unacceptably complex without the sort of import infrastructure being discussed in topics like this.

I never tried to use related Bento databases, because I didn’t like the UI. I think your UI for linked forms is a little better, though perhaps still not quite perfect. But my solution in Bento, which did just what I wanted, was the “simple list”. So now, to migrate, I need a solution for simple lists.

You don’t have such a concept, and that’s fine — I’d be satisfied with your linked forms. The challenge comes in converting thousands of Bento records with simple lists into a set of TapForm linked forms — and until that can happen, I’m stuck with Bento.

I can import the Bento data in CSV form. Obviously it’d be convenient if TapForms could just read that format and create the appropriate linked tables; but I’d be happy to write some Perl or Python to massage the data into an appropriate set of separate CSV files — which of course requires that I be able to define the SQL foreign keys that link the tables.

Although that leads me to a possibly more immediate question, since a topic from several years ago seemed to suggest that you’re using sqlite underneath. How sensitive is TapForms to which aspects of database & table structure? Would it be feasible for my hypothetical Python script to tear apart Bento’s CSV export and build a set of tables directly that TapForms would transparently “adopt” as if you’d created them?

(Whether or not I get an answer, when I have some time I’ll probably poke around to find your sqlite files and look inside them to see what I can figure out; but some hints would be appreciated and could be the key to selling a Mac, iPhone, and iPad version of TapForms… because if I can get the Mac demo looking the way I’d like, I’d be ready to go “all in”.)

[ct4]

Hi – I want to make a list of events that are in my ical calendar in Tapforms. When using Bento there was a library that had all the iCal events in it. Can I do a similar thing with Tapforms? What I am trying to do is have a list of events that are either completed or not completed. So does Tapforms integrate with iCal?

Thanks

[czuch]

Hi Brendan,

Thanks for the reply.

My Forms shows you only those forms which have 1 or more record in them.

But I have a form with 2400 records in it (imported from a Bento template) which doesn’t show at all on My Forms (OS X) or iOS at all.

The iOS version’s “All Forms” list is displayed when you tap on the + button to bring up the Select a Form list.

Seen that thanks, but that only works if I want to add a record, if I want to simply browse the existing records on iOS, for a form that contains a bunch of them and is not on the My Forms group, how do I do that?

Thanks in advance!

czuch