uploading and importing records

[clevow]

Does anyone have an idea as to how to import records from a web interface? Scripts are fine. (yes, I know using scripts from the web is not the best, but it's fine for this application.)

Background: This database is going to be used to send email. It basically does a mail merge kind of thing. I've designed it so that every email to be sent is its own record. The subject, body, etc. are all global fields. The only individually definable fields are the first name, last name, email address, and "other."

I want a user to be able to upload a list (text file or XLS) containing these four fields. Each line of the text file would have to create a new record in the database. I can require the text file to have all four fields present for every record, so that part isn't an issue. That is, I can predefine the field mappings and all.

It is possible that the email list may contain 7000 addresses, so I don't want it to take that long to upload. I also don't think I can have the addresses entered into one text field since it'll potentially exceed the maximum number of characters allowed.

Thoughts and ideas are much appreciated. Thanks!

-Carrie

[Unable]

Hi Carrie,

One of my favorite requests on these forums is that which starts, "I want ...".

People in Hell want Ice Water.

That said, here's the best idea for you. Put forth some personal effort and don't expect easy answers. Learn HTML. Learn how to embed CDML tags into the HTML. Then you will be creating Format Files and involved in Custom Web Publishing. CWP is very powerful.

Additionally, if you will spend some time searching these Internet Forums, you will find that most of your questions have been answered already. If you look in the Sample Files forum, you will find working examples to help guide you.

Doing this, you will find out that you are ahead of those people in Hell.

[ErnieG]

I would add that I don't imagine you'll then be able to "upload" text files over the web. I'm still fairly new to this, but I've never seen a reference to this. As far as I know, people can only use your web interface to enter text in fields and create one record at a time.

If someone had a long list, wouldn't it be simpler for them to send it to you, tab-delimited, so you can import it on your own computer?

Good luck.

Ernie

[cjaeger]

one -possible - way is to use a simple perl script or ftp to import a tab delimited file to your server, then execute a script to import the file ...

another way is to publish your internal FileMaker database via web companion and have your FileMaker webserver execute an xml import ...

third method: there is a file upload plugin from a German software publisher, don't know if it works ... (try google "filemaker file upload plugin")

[Anatoli]

You can update or add records to remote FM from your local copy of FM if your computer has sufficient Internet connection.

HTH

[clevow]

Well, "Unable," thanks for your helpful comments. FYI, I know HTML, I use custom web publishing, and I started with FMP and Lasso back in 1997. That was in a former job. Now all I have is FMP 5.5. And I always search the forums before I post. Thank you.

For those with helpful ideas, I appreciate it. I am, however, trying to avoid using any perl scripting, since that will require my hosting on another server. I also want to keep this strictly web-based, so I'd rather not have to do an import manually. As I said, I'm fine with using FMP scripting, but I couldn't see how I could do that, since you either have to specify a file name or have the user choose it.

Thanks for any other ideas.

-Carrie

[Unable]

But Carrie, the db file to send the email is not web enabled. From your description it has no web connectivity.

You are talking about "Using FileMaker Offline".

Sorry I misunderstood.

[clevow]

didn't mean to bite your head off. sorry. it was first thing in the morning.

the db will be web enabled. the user will be able to specify the global fields - body, from name, from address, etc. the list of addresses it gets sent to needs to be imported somehow to populate the other fields. that's what i'm trying to figure out how to do.

thanks,

carrie

[Garry Claridge]

What type of server are you using?

All the best.

Garry

[Vaughan]

Everything that you want to do sounds do-able, except for the "uploading of the text file" part. On its onwn Web Companion does not support ftp or uploads as such.

Other ways to do it: enter each new record separately through a web form interface -- not suitable for 7000 new e-mail adresses at once though; open the database with the FMP client and perform the import remotely (or even better from the console) which was Anatoli's suggestion.

Any other method is going to involve one or more non-FMP technologies and will become very complicated very quickly.

BTW unless you are using the web interface (ie with Web Companion, and probably only using Custom Web Publishing) you'll need an plug-in to send e-mail through the standard FMP client.

[clevow]

I'm running it on a Windows 2k workstation, using IIS, unfortunately.

I've got everything worked out, except for the importing of the addresses. I can use FTP or whatever, but I need to have a way for the user to upload the file from a web interface. Everything I've seen so far has been perl scripted. I'm trying to get perl for windows working, but I haven't had luck with that in the past.

I'm using SMTPit to send the email. I actually used the database last week to send 6500 emails and it worked great. Now I'm just trying to webify it.

Thanks for the help,

Carrie