Hi Lupas,
The Import Form Template function is for importing Tap Forms templates, not Bento templates. Are you using Tap Forms in English? I’m wondering if maybe I have the menu command set wrong in a different language version of the menu.
Static dates in formulas is not supported. But you could just add a Date field to your form and just never change it to get the same effect. Other than that you’d have to enter in the static date in standard Unix epoch date format. Unix epoch date format is the number of seconds between January 1, 1970 and now.
Thanks!
Brendan
Hi, I’ve not got a lot of experience with databases and I was just wondering if the following is possible in Tap Forms or database apps in general?
I have a text field called ‘Date’. When I initially created my database in Bento I input the date information as, for example: 12 October 1940. I did not need to sort the database by date as when I created it I input each record in the correct order chronologically anyway. So in effect each record was already sorted by date when the database was created. When I imported my database into Tap Forms from Bento the records imported in the same order as they were in Bento. I feel a lot more comfortable using Tap Forms and would like to sort each record by date properly now by setting the actual date field as the ‘First sort field’ incase I want to add any new records and want them to appear in the correct place chronologically amongst the existing records. This is where my lack of knowledge comes into it. Can the Tap Forms date field recognise and put in order chronologically the date format: DD Month YYYY. I presume that this is a pretty non standard date format in this day and age.
I hope the above makes sense? :)
Just one more thing: I am unsure if this is a standard list of options set out by OSX/ios so i’m not too sure if this can be changed? But when you click on a photo field and press the eye icon to enlarge the image, on the file name bar at the top of the image window, next to the ‘Open with Preview’ button there is the generic osx/ios share button. Is it possible to add ‘save image to desktop’ or simply ‘Save as’ to the list of options in the drop down list? I just think it would be quicker to get an individual image out of a Tap Forms record rather than having to open it in Preview then export it to the desktop or anywhere else for that matter.
Thanks
Hi Brendan
First off, I love your App! It is just awesome!
I was thrilled how perfect the import from Bento works in 2.0, good job!
(Although I had to use “Import Form Template…” instead of “Import Bento Template…” to import my Bento database… that’s the way it should be? ;) )
I have a question regarding calculations:
I want to use a static date in a calculation field, for example:
Static Date: 01.01.1950
Variable Date: XX.XX.XXXX -> from the Field [VarDate]
Now I want to calculate the difference (in years) between those dates:
([VarDate]-(01.01.1950))/(60*60*24*365.25)
This does not work.. I tried it with
(01.01.1950)
[01.01.1950]
… and lots of other date formats..
What is the right format to use a static date in calculations?
Or is this not supported yet?
Thanks!
Greetings, lupas
Dragging the image out to save it…should have thought about it before, thanks!
About PDFs dragged into Image fields:
Interesting that you didn’t program the stripping of PDFs down to the first page…TF does it quite swiftly and discreetly !
I checked: the resulting file is indeed just a single JPG image, it is not (as I had hoped) the multi-page PDF simply renamed as JPG.
Problem is, apart from people like me (doing it voluntarily as a bad habit from Bento); many more might do it absentmindedly, and only realise later that they lost all subsequent pages…
The fact that – in the case of Bento imports – the PDFs are kept intact with all pages, adds to the potential confusion for beginners.
But again, I insist and agree: putting PDFs in image field is bad, I’m sure you’ll find a way to prevent us from doing that, while dealing with the over-tolerance of Bento in that matter ;-)
Hi,
I just noticed a “hidden” potential problem with the Bento import function.
Bento allowed to store multi-pages PDF in an Image type field. This was a clear plus for me: it allowed storing a full document in Bento, while still visualising the first page cover when going through records.
I imported my Bento DB. The Bento image field became an image field in TF (as expected).
My PDFs have been fully preserved; in fact, the imported records behave just like in Bento: I can see the first page, and if I click to view the “image” (PDF), I can still see all pages.
However, this does not seem the standard behaviour for Image Fields in Tap Form: when dragging a new PDF to an image field, it only keeps the 1st page.
I can’t criticise TF for only keeping the first page (after all, storing a full PDF in an image field was kind of a trick). However, this is misleading for people like me who assumed we could continue to do that (I have already lost some PDFs, where only the first page was preserved).
In a nutshell:
– Maybe you’d like to make sure those imported Bento PDFs with multiple pages, stored in image fields, are preserved in future updates (otherwise people will complain about loss of data).
– Maybe you should automatically convert Image fields from Bento, where some records have PDFs instead of actual images, as “file attachment fields” (therefore enforcing the logical TF policy (“an Image IS NOT a PDF”).
– Maybe either implement a message warning when dragging PDFs with multiple pages to an image field, or simply refuse PDFs in image fields. Although TF accepts the PDFs there is no notification that all subsequent pages are being erased.
– I would appreciate a “save as” option also for image fields. For the moment, I need to dig in the TF folders to find my PDFs, and properly transfer them to a clean new “File attachment” field. Also, some people may sometimes need to simply export a normal picture for further use.
Yet another special case for you Brendan ;)
Pierre
Greetings,
After doing much research for an alternative Bento app, I settled on your Tap Forms. I got both the desktop App and the App for the iPad.
After testing it and looking at the ipad layout…I have some questions.
1. In the Design editor why can’t I simply copy and paste a field? Or any item on the canvas? I think this should be a normal thing and makes it more efficient to do layouts.
2. It would be really great if there was an option to create an image background in a resizable box. It would really take Tap Forms to the next level esthetically, if can place my own background image textures behind fields.
3. How come there is only the list layout on the ipad? Why can’t I see the layout as is in the design view of the desktop version? Bento allowed that.
Why can’t I hide the thumbs on the left column of the ipad version? so I can see full horizontal mode. This is super important! Also it would be nice to swipe from on entry to another using fingers on the touchpad screen.
4. It would be nice if there was a field where an actual google map can be inserted.
5. It would be nice if there was a photo gallery option.
That’s it for now, otherwise great app! and I look forward to future enhancements, particularly in more design options with background graphics, and seeing the actual design layout on the ipad.
(I am an Art Director- Award Winning Designer, and if you want I can give you some visual ideas)
Thank you, all your answers would be appreciated.
T
Hi Johnny,
Would you be able to send me a sample of your Bento template that has the spaces in the domain and file name with just a few records and photos (if it has photos)? I’ve been testing a template that I have where there’s a space in the json file name, but the importer is able to find it. I just want to make sure that it will work with your file.
Hi Brendan, same thing here.
At first, I thought you had a North-American developer bias and that the international format (starting with “+”) didn’t agree with TF ;)
But then I tested with a simple number, and TapForm froze anyway.
The phone number disappears as expected, then immediately TF freezes (no error message). Quitting with cmd+q still works, reopening TF doesn’t seem to create any problem…other than the phone number being back.
TF 2 is still great, thanks for the Bento importer!
Pierre
Hi Jim,
Well I’ll need a whole manual written up to answer all these questions :-) But I’ll try to summarize here:
1. Yes. You can backup on Mac and restore to iOS. And vice versa. A backup file just compresses the SQLite database file and all the folders for photos, etc. When you restore, all Tap Forms is doing is unzipping the file. The iOS and Mac versions use the same structure for the database, so therefore the backup and restore are compatible between platforms.
2. Click the Show Files button on the Mac version to find out where Tap Forms stores the backup files.
3. Ultimately I would like to do something like what I have with the Bento Template Importer. A Bento template is really just a folder that includes the form template, the data, and all the media. Tap Forms is obviously able to import that now. Generating a file like that takes a bit of work and it’s something that I would like to do for a future update. But for now you need to import the CSV file that gets generated using the Import Records function and then manually copy the photos into the Photos folder in the Tap Forms container (changes depending on if you have iCloud enabled or not). It’s a bit tricky on iOS because there’s no Finder to copy files into the Tap Forms’ Photos folder. So you need to use the FTP server and copy them into the Photos folder that way.
4. The database file is called TapForms_db.sqlite. You can find it here: /Users//Library/Containers/Data/Documents. Just restore it from there using Time Machine.
I hope that helps a bit.
Thanks!
Brendan
Hi
It did work as you instructed regarding the space…..Thank you, Thank you very much
Also the import of my Bento Template file with 834 records and more than 1000 pictures was very, very quick indeed
There are one happy person in Norway today………..
And Bento is now in the garbage can
And now …Tap Forms for iPhone and iPad
Yea!
Johnny
I might have missed some… but did the following and add one picture in Tap Forms…. but still no pictures is showing after import
Also checked the “lib_recipes/49999.json” file
In my saved Bento template the file look correct…but still no pictures will show in Tap Forms
………………
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ standalone=”yes”?>
<bento version=”4.1″>
<library label=”Verktøy 2″ ID=”36861″ icon_set=”com.filemaker.bento.iconset.inventory”>
<domain name=”lib_inventory 3″ ID=”36863″>
………………
The data file do read………
lib_inventory 3/36863.json
………………
2009 Mac Pro 8core 2.66GHz
OSX 10.9.1 (13B42)
Bento 4.1.2 ( 29717 )
834 records ( 1-3 pictures in each record )
Pictures..JPG size 150kb – 250kb
If not possible to solve the problem I will wait for the next update as I am in no hurry to convert from Bento To Tap Forms
Thank you in advance for the help in this matter
Johnny
Dear Brendan,
Thank you so much for the new version of Tap Forms. Version 2.0 is a huge step forward compared to 1.5. As I am also a disappointed Bento-user, I therefore bought Tap Forms one week ago. I have been using Bento mainly for my personal Encyclopaedia database containing a growing 93400+ records so far (each record holds 26 only text fields). I am aware that this is quite a big challenge for Tap Forms to master and unfortunately it is also too much for Tap Forms at this moment to handle this amount of data. Just to import the Bento Template took around 24 hours. I use a MacBook Pro early 2011, 2 GHz, 4 GB RAM with Mac OS X v10.9.1 installed.
Nevertheless I am glad, I could swap to use an application that will grow in time. I would like to encourage you to further improve Tap Forms, so all users will surely benefit from it in the future. Keep up the good work, Brendan!
Peter von L.
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Hi Clint,
It seems that I’ve only just discovered today that Bento sometimes writes the file name of the data files in 2 different ways. When I built the Bento template importer, the Bento data file names looked like this:
lib_recipes/49999.json
But I’ve now discovered that sometimes they’re called:
lib_recipes.json
The name of your library would dictate the name after “lib_”. In my case it was a Recipes library.
So Tap Forms is currently looking for a file with a name like lib_recipes/49999.json but not finding it in your template.
The way to fix this is to:
1. Right-click on the template and select “Show Package Contents”.
2. Click on Contents
3. Open the Template.xml file in a text editor such as TextWrangler
4. Look for something that looks like <domain name=”lib_library” ID=”29994″>
6. The lib_library will match up with the file name of the .json file in the data folder. The 29994 is the ID which needs to be in the file name.
7. Open the data folder to view the list of data files there.
8. Rename the .json file to be lib_library/29994.json using the Finder.
Your file name will be different of course depending on the library name.
Let me know if you’re able to accomplish this. I have already made a workaround in the app to accommodate the 2 different ways the data files can be named. That’ll be in the next update.
Thanks,
Brendan
Hi, thank you for this update. Which looks like it will be well worth the wait once I get it all set-up.
I’m having trouble importing a Bento template. I’ve followed the guide in the manual. So I’ve got an exported bento template on my desktop which is 1.26 GB in size. Each entry/record contains text and photos (up to 10). There are 1035 records in total. Strangely the (Bento) form imports into TapForms (rather quickly for 1.26 GB..) but after it has finished importing (approx 2 seconds) it says that there are zero records in the project when there should actually be 1035? When I manually add a record to this imported form it shows all my original Bento layout with all the correct fields as I would expect but obviously it’s just blank. Any ideas why none of the records are importing?
I’m on Mavericks 10.9.1
Thanks
Clint :)
@appledog, You only need to add a photo one time so that Tap Forms creates the Photos folder then you can import the Bento template that includes photos.
Thanks for the feature request for encrypted fields. Agreed, that would be good to have.
