Search Results for 'script'

[Doug]

Hi, is there a way to create a backup automatically, for example when leave app, or sometime when working on the bdd?
Only on iOS please, a script can handle the job to click on the + on the Backup & Restore window ?!
Thank you for yours ideas!

[Sam Moffatt]

Starting with modelling the data is probably the first problem and then move on from there. Like any database, you’re only going to get so far before you need to teach it some of your custom logic and processes.

That said I write a lot of scripting for Tap Forms to help automate a lot of data entry and speed up common tasks. Scripting added a massive power boost for Tap Forms capability wise to enable all sorts of interesting functionality.

[Sam Moffatt]

The script I posted for combining multiple values from a child form should also work for tables. I use this to make parent fields searchable by values in their child fields.

[Brendan]

Hi Rocky,

That’s right. Date fields can’t be searched via the general search. You need a Saved Search for that. However, Date fields within a Table field can’t be searched at all. I only index the text and numeric data types within a Table field. You could do it by adding a Script field to your parent form which extracts out the date values from your Table field into a single Script field in the parent form. That way when you do a general search you’ll be searching the parent form, not the Table field’s records directly.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Sam Moffatt]

If you’re looking to do a simple field, something like this should work as the contents of a script field. The first few lines set up some variables and get the current values. One thing to note that I use a variable to store the photo field ID because we’re going to use that again later. There is a basic sanity check that if the photo field is empty and the URL is set then go add to the field. If you don’t have this then it’ll keep trying to add to the field (photo fields support multiple images). This should let you delete the image and then if you change the URL again, it’ll download a new image to the field.

var photo_field_id = 'fld-1234';
var photo_field = record.getFieldValue(photo_field_id);
var url_field = record.getFieldValue('fld-4321');

if (photo_field.length == 0 && url_field.length > 0)
{
    record.addPhotoFromUrlToField(url_field, photo_field);
}

I’ve just written this here on the forum, I haven’t tested it so there might be a bug. You’ll have to replace the field ID’s with your own fields but it should work.

[Brendan]

Have you tried it just using the record.addPhotoFromUrlToField(url, fieldID) function and a hard-coded URL? Where fieldID will be the ID of the Photo field.

To get the URL value from another field, just double-click on the Website address field in the Script Editor and Tap Forms will generate code to get the value.

e.g.

var url_field = record.getFieldValue('some-field-id');

Don’t forget to call form.saveAllChanges(); after.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Tom Dropes]

Hi all,

I’m trying to fetch a web image into a TapForms image field with “record.addPhotoFromUrlToField(url, fieldID);”, but I couldn’t find an example anywhere. Is there some script around for a start?

At the end I would like to use a TapForms URL field to enter the path, and get the image which is on the web-server loaded into the image field.

Thx a lot for your help

Tom

[Sin Cohen]

Ok maybe that whole process/program thing was a bridge too far. All I really need is for the information to be organized and trackable in the way I described. I suspect learning the in-and-outs of tapforms will be project enough without having to delve into javascript. Whatever I can do to automate at least the accounting side I am hoping can be done in tapforms without any scripting but the main things would seem to be having things organized well by drive type, then model, then inventory (serials) and then assign serials to sales and remove from inventory (maybe just by transferring that record to the sales sheet/form). A lot of the math could be done with basic spreadsheet type functions but putting that together with serial number tracking and in a nice-to-work-with form(at) is what I am hoping tapforms can do. Not to mention barcode scanning/printing.
Thanks,
s

[Sam Moffatt]

Does tapforms have this sort of “process” ability? where I can start a process like “receiving” for entering new inventory and “sale” for entering sales record info and removing inventory?

Maybe.

For your use case with the hard drives, my guess is this is a basic process that might work:

– you order a bunch of drives from an upstream manufacturer (could be it’s own form)
– you receive those drives and they all have individual serials, you can load these into a drive form
– you make a sale to a customer and create an invoice and link various drives to them

First one you could put in Tap Forms or not, it does capture the start but also superfluous. The second one seems like your entry point for Tap Forms, you create new drive records when you receive and catalog them. Then the next step is an invoice table linked to your drive. Now Tap Forms will let you link all of this together with two or three forms no worries, what it won’t inherently enforce are your business rules.

You could set up an invoice form with a link to the drive form so that you can select candidate drives. This will work but runs the risk that Tap Forms will display everything in that form, including ones you’ve already sold. A potential solution is in fact two drive forms, one with “available” drives and another with “sold” drives where you move records from one form to the other. That’s possible to do but would interact awkwardly with the Tap Forms UI because the same data will be split across two forms.

If you’re fine eschewing the UI a little and happy to spend some quality time with Javascript, then you can use form scripts to automate some of the process. You could set up a saved search for “unsold” drives (e.g. ones not linked to a sale/invoice) and then implement a pre-check to make sure that the drive you just scanned isn’t already sold before linking it to a new invoice. Of course if you link it to an invoice that gets returned or similar then you’d have to unlink the drive from the invoice.

Whilst Tap Forms has a barcode scanner feature built in on iOS, a Bluetooth barcode scanner for your desktop will likely help you speed through this as well. It could also help you on the phone but I’d personally suggest automating via the desktop this functionality. If you can find a programmable Bluetooth barcode scanner that will let you append “Command+N” to the end then you could do really quick data input.

Without some work, Tap Forms can do some of what you want in terms of the data model but that wouldn’t enable the full process management. With some script fields and form scripts, you could automate most of the process to work for what you need with the checks you want. I’m not going to say yes because it’s going to require some scripting work to fully realise but it’s definitely not no: a solid maybe.

[Sam Moffatt]

Thanks @daniel_leu! It’s picking up on what you did and extending it! I only learned about the string interpolation/string template feature recently when I picked Javascript up again with Tap Forms. I was looking for a better way of building larger templated strings because I figured there had to be something by now in Javascript and turns out there was! ES6 brought the language a long way.

[Daniel Leu]

I really should learn Javascript… Thank you, Sam, for showing and explaining how to make the code more elegant and robust!

Cheers, Daniel

---
See https://lab.danielleu.com/tapformspro/ for scripts and tips&tricks

[Sam Moffatt]

You might want to use a form script though depending on what you are doing. The way I think of things is:

• script fields update when the fields they refer to update and change their value based on that. They are useful for setting their own static value or even setting other fields. I use script fields to do stuff like take a notes field, parse it and then fill in other fields in a form. Script fields for me are the sort of thing that you should be able to run multiple times and they should have roughly the same output. Script fields are a little magical which is good and bad.*
• form scripts I use for instances where I need a manual interaction OR the side effect of the script is in a sense variable. I use these for doing quick data entry, creating new records based on existing data or to automate mistake fixing.* The other use case is for building function libraries which allows re-usable code.

In your case I think I’d actually model this as form scripts, create a form for logging and then when you generate your emails you put them in the log. In the log form you have the weblink to create the email and use that to send the email based on the log. That way you have a record of what you generated and when you sent it from within Tap Forms and you don’t have to go to your email to see what you sent.

Then in terms of automating this I’d look to use form scripts with the prompter to ask for input. You could actually build a full state machine in the scripting engine and then use the log form mentioned above to be your audit trail as you go through everything. You could do some of this with script fields that watch and update a state field somewhere (and a previous state field as well) but in this case it sounds like you a form script with explicit intent is better than implicit state management.

* When I say script fields are magical and I use form scripts for mistake fixing…I have a set of script fields that automatically propagate changes for like shipping dates into or from other records. Doing that means that I can’t simply change those fields because it detects those changes, runs it’s validation and then tries to undo the changes I just made because it makes the state inconsistent. To work around this, I have a few form scripts that reset these fields in a way that disables the script field updates so that I can change everything without my own automation undoing the changes.

[john cesta]

It looks like I could make a script as a field type and the result would be the email body. What’s ever in the fields within the script would be available for me to simply copy into an email.

I think that’s possible.

[john cesta]

Thanks Sam. I’ve started with just getting and setting one field. What I have is a form called written biz and want to send the client an email for each phase of the policy. In the email I put the policy number, their name, and a few other fields in the record. So what’s ever In the record will go when I send the email.

It works the same for every one and every policy. So while the calculation may be too weak
Th script would certainly do it.

I understand the complexity of a partial feature set. I didn’t think of the iPhone aspect though.

John

[Sam Moffatt]

The challenge with porting some of that stuff over to iOS is whilst it makes sense for iPad it isn’t as useful on iPhone. That means it’s something useful for only half of the iOS market now that iOS apps are on both form factors. Perhaps an extra unlock for that as a feature so that those who only use an iPhone don’t have to pay for a feature they can’t use. That then leads to complications in the UI around enabling and disabling functionality based on the purchases which has their own challenges (and the inevitable restore purchases button). There’s also the other challenge that there is only one Brendan.

I think you can use a calculation field to create the text you want and if you’re not doing a whole bunch of them at once, you can use the process Daniel Leu suggested as well. If you look at the bottom of the Calculations documentation, there is an example of formatting an address using a calculation field. You could use that as the basis of building out a fully formatted body. Alternatively you could use a script to build the template as well for creating the email link. Using a script, you’d put your template inside of the script and you can use variables inside of it.

You can use a script to set multiple field values, setFieldValue or setFieldValues from the JS API can help you out there. Once you set a value, you also need to save those changes with document.saveAllChanges() otherwise they might not persist.

On my iPad I did a quick test to build a form with a standard address layout and then made a script field to populate a “Web Site” field for me. The script looks like this:

var name = record.getFieldValue('fld-f3d753238cf4457cb2ccd5c0eaa96b0f');
var email = record.getFieldValue('fld-b1b7229002144634ae174c861b78ae72');
var address_1 = record.getFieldValue('fld-ba8218dbc15741428af68f3e80c29fea');
var address_2 = record.getFieldValue('fld-d11947b80b7a4592aa1815588275ef8e');
var city = record.getFieldValue('fld-c22af0fe9d1a4fd3a587d96a83b352e5');
var postcode = record.getFieldValue('fld-10d06c4cd8564b5a87ed365c5a307740');
var state = record.getFieldValue('fld-35f71f806348488e8f755be48b8ce2f2');
var country = record.getFieldValue('fld-0b6fe598592c428bab1010755d4bfa89');
var text = record.getFieldValue('fld-8b5d1c927eca4daa89c7750848bd02c2');

var addressLines = [];
name ? addressLines.push(name) : null;
address_1 ? addressLines.push(address_1) : null;
address_2 ? addressLines.push(address_2) : null;
addressLines.push(`${city} ${state} ${postcode}`);
country ? addressLines.push(country) : null;
var address = addressLines.join('\n');

var subject = encodeURIComponent(`Hello ${name}! We missed you!`);
var body = encodeURIComponent(`Hello ${name},

We haven't seen you for a while and we wanted to 
reach out to you. We don't  have a phone number 
on file for you but we do have your address:
${address}

If this isn't correct, please let us know so we 
can keep in touch. 

Thanks in advance!

Your Friends`);

var linkText = `mailto:${email}?subject=${subject}&body=${body}`;
var send_email_template_id = 'fld-f03ed31415304eab814d9f137db2f598';
record.setFieldValue(send_email_template_id, linkText);
document.saveAllChanges();

• The first chunk of the script gets all of the fields I care about via getFieldValue, that’s relatively straight forward.
• The next section does a simple address composition as an example of how empty/unset fields could be handled (it’s not perfect, I took a shortcut on the City/State/Postcode line). It uses the Javascript ternary operators to determine if it should add to an array and then does a join on what was added to the array.
• The next piece uses the Javascript backtick string interpolation feature to template the values out. It’s similar to the bracket format above except it uses a dollar sign and curly braces to wrap the variable. These values map to variables defined within the script itself. The first line is easy, it’s just the subject line. The second one shows how you can turn that into a multiline string to splice in values. Of note here I use encodeURIComponent to escape the text so that if you put in a special character it doesn’t munge the email.
• The last few lines compose the link text that makes the email. This is essentially the process Daniel Leu suggested though not encapsulated as well as he has done.

As you change the referenced fields, the web site field will update with the new values and then you can just tap on the globe icon and Tap Forms (after it asks “are you sure?”) will spin up Mail on the iPad prefilled with your email.

Edit: Forgot that the backticks are special on Brendan’s forum too. I used an online HTML entity encoder/decoder to fix it up.

Edit: I wrapped some of the lines in the message to better fit in the forum. Where you put line breaks in the script is where they will show up in the email. I’d generally want to manually wrap lines when doing plain text emails at less than 70 columns but that’s just me.