Guide to Updating Plug-ins

Setting up Auto Update in your database 9
To set up plug-in version checking in your database
1. Open your database using FileMaker Pro and enable the Auto Update plug-in in the Preferences dialog
box.
2. Create a layout to contain:
1 fields defined with the global storage option to collect plug-in version information or result codes
1 a button to manually run the script that creates a plug-in version information file for storage on the
server
For an example layout that contains all the fields and the button you need, see the STARTUP layout
in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file.
3. Write a script that uses the FMSAUC_Version function, which returns the name and version of the
Auto Update plug-in available in FileMaker Pro. If the name and version string is not returned,
FileMaker Pro assumes the Auto Update plug-in is missing or isn’t enabled on the client computer.
4. Write a script that uses the YourPlugIn_Version function to check the version of the plug-in on the
client computer and place version information in the global field named Local_Version in your Auto
Update layout.
For script syntax, see the Local Plug-in Check script in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file.
Information about the
YourPlugIn_Version function should be included in the third-party plug-in
documentation.
5. Write a script that uses the FMSAUC_FindPlugIn function to check the version of the plug-in on the
server computer and place version information in the global field named Remote_Version in your
Auto Update layout.
For script syntax, see the Remote Plug-in Check script in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file. For
information about the FMSAUC_FindPlugIn function, see
“FMSAUC_ FindPlugIn” on page 10.
6. Write a script that converts version information to number format and places the result in additional
global fields in your Auto Update layout.
This conversion to number format is required for a comparison of the plug-in version information
collected from the client and server computers.
For script syntax, see the Get Version Numbers script in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file. For
information about the GetAsNumber function, see the FileMaker Pro onscreen Help.
7. Write a script to download the plug-in from the server computer, if the version on the client computer
doesn’t exist or is outdated.
For script syntax, see the Download Plug-In script in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file. For
information about the FMSAUC_UpdatePlugIn function, see
“FMSAUC_UpdatePlugIn” on
page 11.
8. Write a “parent” script to:
1 make sure the Auto Update plug-in exists and is enabled on the client computer
1 run the individual version checking and downloading scripts you wrote earlier
For script syntax, see the Run Plug-in Scripts script in the AutoUpdatePlugin.fp7 sample file. For
information about the FMSAUC_Version function, see “FMSAUC_Version” on page 10.