A Dead Horse?

[vharrison1]

Hi everyone -

I'm sure this has been asked/answered a zillion time on this board, but my limited searching has come up empty.

I've been charged with assessing how our company can provide clients an order form system tapping into our FMPro Inventory DB. Their access would be via the Web. Here's what we run:

Windows NT/2000 Server

FMPro 5.5

The Instant Web Publishing functionality is obviously so limited that we are interested in the Custom options. I have enough HTML/JavaScript knowledge to get the ball rolling, but here's my question - is it true that I need FMPro Unlimited before getting into the Custom Web Publishing? If I'm wrong, then I'm missing some kind of key step in getting anything other than my IWP views to appear. I just don't know where to begin.

Helping newbies is good for your karma, FYI.

Any assistance would be fantastic (here or [email protected] ) - thanks.

Vic

[Kurt Knippel]

Filemaker Pro Unlimited is only needed to serve information to more than 10 unique IPs in a 12 hour period.

IWP is basically a set of dynamically generated HTML pages created on the fly by Web Companion, while custom web publishing requires that you create all the pages yourself.

This is the reason you are not seeing them, you need to create them first.

[vharrison1]

OK, then I think I'm even more confused that I originally thought.

I've got the port set to 591.

I've got a default.htm file in my Web/CDML Examples/ folder (I'm following a tutorial, as you probably guessed).

When I type http://localhost:591/ it shows me the default IWP page. Fine.

When I do anything else (ex., http://localhost:591/CDML Examples/default.htm) I get "Not Found: The requested file is not found on the server"

I suppose I'm missing an obvious issue. Can anyone help?

Thanks so much - this is a very helpful forum.

Cheers,

Vic

[Garry Claridge]

The URL syntax is:

http://localhost:591/FMPro? ...add parameters here.

An example is:

http://localhost:591/FMPro?-db=mydb.fp5&-lay=mylayout&-format=myhtml.htm&-findall

The Format file "myhtml.htm" needs to reside in the "Web" folder.

Hope this helps.

Garry

p.s. You can test if it is working with:

http://localhost:591/FMPro?-dbnames

[Steve T.]

Hi, V! Here are some tips while you're learning CDML...

TIP#1: Since you're interested in Custom Web Publishing (CWP), I would suggest disabling IWP so you don't have to worry about it anymore. Also, disable any security (Access Privileges, Web Security Database, etc.) and don't use any spaces or special characters in your field names, folders, layouts, or databases.

TIP#2: Make a plain old web page initially w/no FMP code (index.html) and set that to your default page in the Web Companion configuration. If it publishes OK, then you can start adding CDML and FORM tag stuff. Also, unless port 80 is already in use by other server software, use :80 instead of :591. It makes URLs simpler.

TIP#3: When you enter your FORM ACTION, this will be the root level for your site.

<FORM ACTION="http://www.yourplace.com/FMPro"

<FORM ACTION="http://www.yourplace.com/project/FMPro"

Relative links to pages and images will be based on that line. If you forget what your root directory is, you can get messed up and have broken links and file not found errors. The 1st example uses the Web folder as root; the other uses project (or whatever) folder in the Web folder as root.

TIP#4: Use 1 layout to web publish and make sure all fields you need to access are always on it. Don't use an error page initially so FMP can tell you what kind of errors you're getting. Use boolean flags and other little programming tricks as needed to track.

Here's a snippet from one of my other posts with some more tips and some of the basic CDML tags used...

--- FROM AN EARLIER POST -----------

From the Web Companion config area, just select Custom Web Publishing, choose a starting index.html/default.html page you made yourself, and the security you want to implement. Then, set your db to be shared via WC and leave it running. You'll have to make your own web pages to interact with the db. FMP gives you a CDML reference db and CDML Tools to help. The basic structure is...

SEARCH PAGE. form, -db, -lay, -max, -format, -error

SEARCH RESULTS PAGE. FMP-record, FMP-field (w/ FMP-linkrecid)

DETAIL PAGE. FMP-field(s) of your record

You can also make -new and -edit pages (the latter requires -recid and FMP-currentrecid to work). You cannot display db data until the Web Companion is used, so if you want to DISPLAY data on your front page and not just INPUT, then you have to use a splash page or similar trick to have the Web Companion accessed/used first.

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