Importing a FileMaker database

[Philip Gibson]

I have a single database. It has about 5,000 records. As well as text fields, each record contains and image field and a number of fields with radio buttons. I’d like to move it over to Tap Forms and I’m wondering whether anyone could give me advice on whether this is feasible and, if so, how.

[Philip Gibson]

I’ve just been in touch with the developer of FMPro Migrator (http://www.fmpromigrator.com/products/fmpro%5Fmigrator/index.html).

He suggested that if Tap Forms could implement support for directly importing SQLite databases, then FMPro Migrator could work with FileMaker as well as with Bento. And because Tap Forms already supports Bento (which uses SQLite), they already have some code in place to make that possible.

So I’m hoping that someone from the Tap Forms team will see this and respond.

[Daniel Leu]

Did you had a look at https://www.tapforms.com/forums/topic/import-from-filemaker/?

[Brendan]

Hello Phillip,

There will be a problem getting the images out of FileMaker. I’m not sure if it will export photos.

But Tap Forms can import photos if you have them in a folder and in your CSV file that you import, you just need a reference to the photo filename in a Photo field. The Mac version has the ability to select a folder of photos along side a CSV file that you want to import. It uses the filename in the Photo field in your CSV file to match up with the filename of the photos stored in the photos folder.

Are you able to export your FileMaker data such that the photos can be stored in a separate folder from the CSV file that contains your data?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Philip Gibson]

I did, thank you, Daniel. I had a go at exporting in Merge format but when I tried to include the image field, I got a warning message saying “Container fields cannot be exported.”

[Philip Gibson]

Brendan, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ve tried all the available export formats in FileMaker and in each case I get that message, “Container fields cannot be exported.” Thanks for your suggestion.

[Brendan]

It seems quite incredulous to me that such an expensive app such as FileMaker Pro has no way of exporting images. One of the goals I had when I first started building Tap Forms is I didn’t want customers to have to be locked into using Tap Forms forever. Your data is your data, not mine. If you want to switch to another app, then by all means, do so as I provide the means to export your data in a common format that other apps can read.

[Philip Gibson]

Brendan, I agree. I’ve also been in touch with David at .com solutions. He has authored an app called FMPro Migrator (I’m sure you know all about it). He pointed out that TapForms already supports Bento, which uses SQLite. If TapForms could provide support for directly importing SQLite databases, then I and others in a similar situation could use FMPro Migrator to move our databases from FileMaker to TapForms. Do you have any plans along those lines for the future?

[Daniel Leu]

If you have a sqlite database, you can export it as csv which then can be imported by TapForms. Obviously that’s a bit more work, but it should get you there.

Last year I did something similar where I had to convert an Act! database to be able to use with TapForms.

[Brendan]

@Philip,

FileMaker Pro databases are not SQLite based. Bento was based on SQLite. But not FMPro. They have their own proprietary database file format.

And Tap Forms supports importing data from Bento because Bento can export the template as an XML file and all the data as .json files and all the images in separate folders all referenced by the .json data file. The .bentoTemplate files contain all this data when exported by Bento.

So that’s how I import Bento data, not by reading the SQLite file directly.

[Philip Gibson]

Daniel, Brendan, thanks to both of you for your observations and advice. I think that until another solution shows up (and who knows if it ever will), I’m tied into FileMaker. It works perfectly well for me but the cost of keeping it up to date has become truly eye-watering and pretty much unaffordable for those of us who are not using it as a business tool. Too bad.

[Sam Moffatt]

I will make the observation that if you’re having issues getting data out now, that’s generally a problem that will only increase with time not decrease as your record base increases. That said I could have sworn FileMaker had some sort of ODBC/JDBC functionality to pull data out but that might require the server version.

[Philip Gibson]

You’re right, Sam. Unfortunately, I’ve been using FileMaker Pro since the 1980s so the problem has had plenty of time to increase. I think I’m well and truly stuck.

[Daniel Leu]

I don’t think you are stuck, but it might take a bit of elbow grease….

According to the documentation I found, you can export records as csv which then can be imported in TapForms. It looks like you can export images as well: https://fmhelp.filemaker.com/help/18/fmp/en/index.html#page/FMP_Help/export-field-contents.html

[Brendan]

Ah yes. Some sort of FM Script:

Go to Record/Request/Page [ First ]
Loop
	Set Variable [ $PATH ; Value: Get ( DocumentsPath ) & GetContainerAttribute ( Products::Container ; "filename" ) ]
	Export Field Contents [ Products::Container ; "$PATH" ; Create folders: Off ]
	Go to Record/Request/Page [ Next ; Exit after last: On ]
End Loop

[Philip Gibson]

Thanks, Daniel and Brendan. I’ve just taken a look. I think I’m going to need to learn how to write a script in FileMaker. I hoped I could copy and paste and tweak the code. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Right now, I don’t have time to investigate further but I’ll put it on my to-do list. Thanks again and best wishes.

[Brendan]

Hi Philip,

I just saw that your reply from September 10th was marked as spam. I unspammed it. Must have been because of the link. But to answer the question, even though Tap Forms does import Bento files and yes, Bento uses SQLite, Tap Forms doesn’t read the Bento SQLite database file. It relies on Bento first exporting a .bentoTemplate file which is a folder that contains a Template.xml file, a bunch of .json files, and a bunch of media files. Tap Forms reads the Template.xml file to get the form structure. Then reads the .json files to get all the data and matches that data up with the media files and imports all of that.

So Tap Forms would still not be able to read the SQLite files generated by the FileMaker migration tool. Unless it can also export CSV files.

[Philip Gibson]

That’s a pity but thanks for letting me know, Brendan.

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