Importing photos from the web

[Netman]

I am currently setting up a real estate database for local real estate agencies.

The database will contain property listings with photos.

I have set up an admin section for them to add their listings, but I'm not sure how to set up the web page to allow them to upload photos to FMP.

I am currently using FMP 4 and will be upgrading to 5.5 in the near future.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[proton]

quote:

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Originally posted by Netman:

I am currently setting up a real estate database for local real estate agencies.

The database will contain property listings with photos.

I have set up an admin section for them to add their listings, but I'm not sure how to set up the web page to allow them to upload photos to FMP.

I am currently using FMP 4 and will be upgrading to 5.5 in the near future.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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This is a tricky question and has been the subject of much discussion. The trick is that one cannot upload to Filemaker over the web. Your best bet is to let them upload pics using normal FTP to the FM web folder or an images folder in the FM web folder. Now when they do that the trick is to get the pics into filemaker.

However, having pics in Filemaker hosted over the web tends to hit performance. Databases applications use a lot of resources and having pics in the database (especially if they are large and/or the database contains lots of records) causes the database to eventually slow down/exhibit poor performance.

What you can do is present them with a form where they put in the name of the picture file. This creates the record in the database (i.e. instead of a container field for the pic, you have a text field for the filename). They are then taken to another webpage where you use java or whatever to allow them to ftp the file up to the appropriate folder. When you want to display the images, you just use the IMG tag, put in the path, and use the Field CDML option to supply the name of the file, and it will display the picture. Hope you understand all this ranting...

PS: This link should be of some help: http://www.fmforums.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000216

[ May 22, 2001: Message edited by: proton ]

[Vaughan]

Images can be imported into container fields through the FMP client, but not through the web. If only one or two people are adding images to the database, this isn't a bad way to do it.