Can this be done?

[EddyB]

Hi,

I have absolutely no prior knowledge or experience of XML XSL I've heard words like stylesheets etc but have never read anything about this so I haven't got a clue.

Can someone tell me if the following would be possible using XML

There is a website - not mine so I cannot change this in anyway - this website contains records and fields. One of the fields is a reference number.

Can I set my solution up so that in my FileMaker Pro Database I can enter the reference number, click a button, it will then go off to the website find this record, and bring back into my database the other information from the other fields into seperate fileds on my database.

The website has a database back end - not sure what, but know for certain it is not FileMaker.

I know this is a very vague question but in principle do you think this is possible, is this a HUGE HUGE task or fairly straight forward (I have about 4 years experience on FileMaker) and where can I find out more on this,

We have not yet upgraded to FileMaker 6 which I'm hoping to do soon so I guess some documentation may be there which will help, but for now, any good websites? Where can I get some examples of XML in use with FMPro?

Many Thanks

EddyB

[CobaltSky]

Hi Eddy,

Irrespective of the capabilities of XML, I think you might find it useful to pay a visit to the Troi Automatisering site and take a look at their URL plug-in.

http://www.troi.com/software/urlplugin.html

The Troi URL Plug-in will enable you to post and retrieve data from HTTP/HTTPS addresses, plus fill out web forms, and it runs with all versions of FMP from 5.x upwards.

While XML may provide a partial solution, I suspect that you will get further faster with the Troi product installed.

[cjaeger]

What you cannot do directly with XML: Http import

But what you can do with 5.5:

- fill web forms

- use internet explorer and applescript, get the text back into filemaker

and with 6.0

- do a http request to a perl script /php script on some server

- this perl script fetches the web page specified in the url

- filters out some text

- returns xml to filemaker

That is how the service object works.

I use it to translate text with google trannslation service. unfortunately, FileMaker does not support http POST, so i can only use about 300 characters in the query...

[EddyB]

Hi CobaltSky and Cjaeger,

Thanks for your posts.

ColbaltSky:

this looked very interesting so I had a look at the link you gave me. This would work but think it would work out quite expensive. The solution I need to produce is for 500 users. The developer license will cover the first 25 users but then I will need to pay 10 US$ each for the other 475 users!

Cjaeger:

I think your post will work for me. Have I got this right - you enter some text into your database (maximum of 300 characters), it goes off to the perl script. The perl script then goes to the Web page specified and enters the text, the website translates the text and then returns this translated filtered text to your database?

If so then this is for me!

The text I need to send to the website is only 8 characters (a reference number).

Many thanks

EddyB