Figure 1: Specify Output File -- How to use a variable in the Export Field Contents "Specify" dialog.

If you'd like to follow along with the examples in this article, you'll need a table named vCardImporter with a text field called data, a global text field called peskyNull_g (choose the Auto-Enter - Data: option under Options, but leave the auto enter data field blank for now), and a global container field called vCard_g. Let's get started.

Bring the vCard data into your database

You might be wondering why you can't simply import a vCard into FileMaker Pro. Well, the ".vcard" and ".vcf" file extensions aren't recognized file formats for FileMaker Pro. Although you could manually change the extension in your file system every time you want to import a vCard, there's a more elegant solution.

Steps 1-3 prompt the user for a vCard, then export and rename it so you can import it as a .txt file. Step 4 imports the data from the renamed vCard as FileMaker Pro records, one record per line in the vCard.

1. Start by creating a script titled Import. In it, add an Insert File script step to add the vCard to the global container field. Be sure to leave the Specify File option unspecified in the Insert File script step; it will cause FileMaker Pro to present the file open dialog to the user. For this technique, it doesn't matter if the user clicks on "Store only a reference to the file" in the file selection dialog, because Export Field Contents -- the script step you use to write the file out with a different name -- does its job the same way for a file stored in a container field, as well as a reference to a file on disk.
2. Add a Set Variable script step to store the path and name you want to use to rename your vCard file. An easy way to get a valid path is to copy it out of a script step that offers a file reference dialog, such as Import Records, then change the name of the file to your temporary file name. Whatever file name you choose, you must make the file extension .txt. The example code shows how to specify a generic temporary file name. Remember, the value in this variable is just there to write out the vCard the user has chosen to a known location as a .txt file. You can remove the .txt file at the end of the process, or overwrite it every time you run the Import script.
3. Add an Export Field Contents script step, referencing the container field that holds the vCard and the variable that holds the path and file name you want to use to rename the vCard. Beginning with FileMaker Pro 8, you can use variables to dynamically specify paths for script steps that have embedded file references (referred to as unnamed file references because you don't save these file references with the Define/Manage File Reference dialog, and you can't use them anywhere else in your application). The best approach is to initialize a script variable in a previous script step and insert the variable into the unnamed file reference dialog used by the script step. See the sidebar "Best Practices" for more information. Don't try to perform calculations in that file reference dialog, simply insert the variable (figure 1).
4. Add an Import Records script step to import the records from the renamed file into the data field, entering $path in the Specify File dialog. Select "Perform without Dialog," because there is no need to show the dialog.