Goodies 7: Search field for relationship graph

When you open the database definition dialog and go to the tab for relationships, the MBS Plugin adds a combobox to the layout. You can type something, press return and we search the graph for the item matching the name. If needed, you can click on the search box again, press return and continue the search.

This feature is available for macOS and Windows. It can be enabled in preferences dialog or using the SyntaxColoring.RelationshipGraphSearchBox.SetEnabled function.

The combobox has a popup menu to show all choices you have. If the menu is open and you type in the field, we filter the menu to the items you like to find.

To help search, please name items with unique starting names. If you have Contacts and ContactsPhone, the search to Contacts will find either of them, whatever we find first. But if you name second table PhoneForContacts, you find it easily with phone as search term.

Windows

Since we added the search box for the relationship graph for Windows in version 13.0, a lot has improved:

As you may notice the look changed a bit and it is no longer a text field, but a combo box, so you can popup the control and see the choices. We populate the choices when the dialog opens, so if you just added a new table, it doesn't yet show up. But next time you open the window, it should be in the list:

We hide the field, if you move to another tab. And when we create the field, we generate two hotkeys: Control-F and Control-G. You can press Control-F to move focus to the search field. Type something and press return. Then you can press Control-G to search again.

There are a few limitations. This is built on top of the dialog made by Claris. There is only so much we can do from the outside. Claris could built this into the product and do a better integration, but that is only on the wish list.

The feature basically is only possible for us as the relationship graph is an old style control and hasn't changed much since version 7 of FileMaker. All the other controls got replaced and the plugin has no access to them. We even don't know which tab we are on, so we can check only whether the relationship graph is there and show our search field. And whenever Claris redoes this panel in the future, our search feature will stop working.

If the search doesn't show up, please check whether you have the current version and not an older one. Also visit preferences dialog, where we have a checkbox to enable or disable this feature.