John Sindelar suggested that I include some more details about our FileMaker Pro/Go Signature Capture Method.
It runs completely within FileMaker. There are no plugins needed and it doesn’t communicate with server. It works like this:
- You load the signature capture layout. It has a webviewer that displays the interface so the user can use their finger to sign the screen.
- When the record loads, an OnTimer starts to watch the URL of the webviewer for a code indicating that the URL has changed.
- The user signs the page, enters their name, and enters any other fields that you might add. The Name field is optional.
- The user submits the web form that’s in the webviewer. It uses javascript to change the webviewer URL to a Thank You message with an html comment containing a text flag and the fields including the text representation of the signature as parameters.
- The OnTimer script sees that the URL now contains the text flag. It collects the parameters and sets the fields in the database.
- At this point the signature is captured.
- Viewing the signature is simple. You just need a webviewer to display the text representation of the signature.
It’s really amazing that all this can be done with out any add ons. I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that you can have an html form submit its values to the webviewer URL. That makes it easy to communicate back to FileMaker, if an OnTimer script is running to capture the values.
Yesterday, FileMaker Go was updated to include FMP7Script URLs that can contain parameters. We’ll update the signature capture soon to use the new URL scheme. If it works like I think it should, the OnTimer Script might not be needed anymore. We might update the interface a bit too.
Feel free to download the demo. It’s unlocked so you can examine how it works.
http://bit.ly/FileMakerSignatureCapture
Also check out Andy Frazier’s demo. His example file takes ours one step further so you can convert the text representation of the signature into an image file that can be stored in a container.
http://www.reliablesoftworks.info/GO_SignMe.zip
Hal, I would like to use the signature capture s/w to markup a medical image on an ipad. I am struggling with inlaying said image. I am a beginner.
Regards,
Mike Van Meter
Hi Hal,
did you get the FMP7Script protocol to work? I honestly don’t think you can call it from a webviewer…
I agree thought it should.
Thanks in advance, and thanks you liked my QR Barcode reader.
No. We never got the fmp7script url to work. It seems to only work in FileMaker Go from other apps. Odd that it can’t respond to its own URL scheme.
We’re using javascript to set the URL of the web viewer with parseable text. Then using OnTimer, we watch the URL for the changed text. It works…
Thanks so much for your QRCode barcode reader. Very nice. I also love the code that captures images with the isight, but the images are not useable. I’m on Lion…
hi Hal
concerning the QR barcode, just drop me an email… andries [AT] bh-a [DOT] com
Do you get the image in your container field?
I know we can work with an OnTimerScript, but this could work for a special feature, but not if you want to use webviewers all over the place. At that moment I should use this onTimer everywhere and it would consume too much battery…
Too bad FileMaker cannot get this to work. However using it in a GoToURL works… (but this doesn’t make sense of course
)
I meant Open URL and not GoToURL…