Update matching records whilst importing

Classic Servoy
1

In FilemakerPro, one can update matching records whilst importing, selecting just the fields that you want to update.

How can this be done with Servoy?

2

You could either use readTxtfile to read the text and loop through it yourself, or you could import into a temp table an loop through that.

Just our of curiosity: where did you use that fmp function for?

3

jaleman:
You could either use readTxtfile to read the text and loop through it yourself, or you could import into a temp table an loop through that.

Just our of curiosity: where did you use that fmp function for?

It’s very useful, for instance, if you want to update a sales catalogue: old article’s prices are updated and new ones are added.

4

The function has been there for sometime.

I have a marketing db table of companies, which holds the latest revenue for each company, Each month we are given a new file from the client to update with the latest revenues and add new companies.

Could you provide an example of the loop please.

Thanks

5

Below is an example that reads a tab separated file into arrays that you can then use to do anything. replace \t with any other separator character if necessary.

var fileContents = application.readTXTFile() //if necessary you can put the full path there as well
//put each line into an array item
var fileLines = fileContents.split("\n");
//fileLines is now an array with 1 item per line
//now loop through the array to get to the cells
for ( var i = 0 ; i < fileLines.length ; i++ )
{
	var cellsArray = fileLines[i].split("\t");
	//your code that needs the data here, for example to read the first cell:
	var theFirstCell = cellsArray[0]
}
6

I was having trouble with this myslef. Espescially when you have to import over 20000 records and run a loop to update all calculations. I have found the best way to import large record set from filemaker is to export the calculation fields as well. I usually export into XML, then import directly into your backend. This also has resolved some issues I had with large text fields that included tabs, date fields, etc. This is most likely not the most efficeint way.