Fixed Field Length Imports
Even in today's interconnected world, you'll still find systems which are so legacy that the only thing you get out of them is some type of output which was popular back in the late 80's and early 90's. One of those formats, which isn't actually an import format, is PCL (Printer Command Language). Yep, there's still a lot of education institutions which will output a PCL file as an export, which is simply just fixed length text with instructions about how a printer should handle the output. It's probably from the heavy use of the good old dot matrix printer days. PCL, however, is used for more than just dot matrix printers.
The great thing about ANY structured content is that you can easily parse and extract exactly what you need from it - so long as you decipher the formatting. PCL, CSV, HTML and JSON - they're all just structured data. This video and its associated file is all about parsing a fixed field length PCL file.
It's a collection of scripts and information about how to go about dynamically parsing a well structured PCL based text file. So, if you're doing development for a business or educational institution, which still only provides PCL output, and you want a clean way to parse the data into your FileMaker solution, then you'll find everything you need to do so successfully and flexibly within the provided file and video.
Comments
Great video + example file
A dense topic well taught! I both learned improved techniques (eg., Exit Loop If [ Let ( $i = $i + 1 ; If ( $i > Int ( $count ) ; Let ( $i = "" ; True ) ) ) ] as well as new techniques (eg., solid tutorial on managing and building a JSON array in a variable).
Love this site!
needed the last 20 mins, learnt from it all
I have been importing very large fixed field length files into databases on a regular basis for many years and when I converted (from Lotus) to filemaker, ended up first converting to csv and then importing. Since my files are not pcl I did not need the fist 50 mins or so of this video, but it was extremely informative. Now I will apply the last piece of this to my regular imports and see how much time is saved.
Thank you for this great tutorial, as always, brilliantly explained at a very appropriate speed and with the detail needed, of all the trainings and subscriptions (and even Devcons) that I have paid for, this subscription is by far the best value for money and, for me, what I learn from the most when it comes to filemaker.
Skiin Ian
Need help with a similar but simpler import
I have a raw fixed length file that has no embedded length information. Instead I have a definition file that includes the position and length of the fields. I need to automate the import of these files into Filemaker. Can the author of this work help me? Please contact me soonest.