Frequently Asked Questions

1. How can I avoid loosing a date previously typed in a field if I cancel PopCal?

2. Why do I get a blank date in my date field when I type a date with PopCal?

3. Why Filemaker does not recognize the date returned by PopCal as a Date?

1. How can I avoid loosing a date previously typed in a field if I cancel PopCal?

Due to the way they are designed to interact with Filemaker, Plug-ins have to return parameter, even if such paramenter is "empty" but they cannot return "nothing".

Under such scenario, PopCal was developed to return an empty string if it is cancelled, causing that a previously typed date in a field be substituted by a "blank string".

This is not a bug and it is easily solved within you calling Filemaker script:

Fields:
Temp -- Global field Text
myDate -- The date field you want to put the date in.

Script:
SetField["Temp", "External("POP-DateSelection", 0)"]
If [Temp <> ""]
SetField["myDate", TextToDate(Temp)]
EndIf

2. Why do I get a blank date in my date field when I type a date with PopCal?

Usually this happens when your PopCal preferences have selected a date format different from the one your Filemaker file or your Operative System has.

Try changing the date format from dd/mm/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy or to yyyy/mm/dd according to the format you need.

This problem usually makes you to see dates displayed before the 12th day of the month because days are taken as months.

To verify that the plug works properly, see the date returned by the plug in a text field. (Temp field if you use the script above to call the plug).

3. Why Filemaker does not recognize the date returned by PopCal as a Date?

Filemaker plug-in API is designed to send and receive a single string parameter. Therefore, the string returned by PopCal although looks like a date it is not a date internally for Filemaker. To make the PopCal string a valid date, we need to pass the result to the Filemaker function TextToDate() (see script above).

The result provided by TextToDate() is a valid Filemaker date that can be used within your Filemaker files to perform any date calculation or function.