New to FM online

[DanBrill]

I'm about to dive headlong into a new area of FileMaker, namely using it online. I'll give you some background so you know where I'm coming from...

I'll be starting a new job on Sept. 1. Part of my responsibility will be to get the website up and running. Right now there is nothing there for a website outside of a white page with an address and a phone number on it. So I'm starting unencumbered by any history. I have a blank slate.

The website will be linked to a FM 7 database which I'll be building as well. This database will contain data for customers and general public consumption. Eventually this FM 7 database will be integrated with the shop's extensive ERP, which has been built on FM 6, and will be migrated to FM7 over the next 12 to 18 months.

So for the web side of the business, the plan is to use FM 7 Server Advanced. IWP might work, but in the end we'll probably want to do some advanced things that will be beyond IWP and will require custom web publishing, which, if I understand correctly, will all be driven by xml in FM7.

I have some experience with xml. The web's basic design work will be done it Dreamweaver. (I've always used Front Page, but I'm more than happy to abandon this for DW, which looks really powerful.) I've ordered 2 books that should help: Advanced FileMaker Pro 6 Web Development by Bowers and Lane, and FileMaker Pro 6 Developer's Guide to XML/XSL by Beverly Voth. Granted these are for FM 6, but they should help, and there's nothing out there on FM7 and the web yet, at least not that I know of.

At this point I'm just trying to get my head around the big picture. Suppose I want to display a web page with data from my FM database. How have I created this? Have I created a FM layout that becomes a web page called up by a browser, or do I create a web page with Dreamweaver which makes a call to the database on my server, which in turn returns the data to the browser? Or am I just way off base and neither of these descriptions is doing it justice? Or is this the difference between IWP and CWP?

Is it possible to have a website that has a combination of IWP and CWP?

Does it make any sense to use Cold Fusion with FileMaker, or will I just be using raw xml to communicate with FM 7 Advanced Server? Coldfusion can use xml, but would it just be an unnecessary step?

How does PHP fit into the picture? I've also seen reference to PHP.fx. What's that?

Do other scripting languages like Perl come into play? I have experience with Perl, but none with PHP. (I picked up 2 books on PHP over the weekend and they've been added to my ever-growing reading list).

Does the regular FM 7 Sever allow for web connections, or is the very purpose of Advanced Server? Or is it that FM 7 Sever allows for web connections, but only using IWP?

Did FM 6 Unlimited have any limit on the number of simultaneous web connections? FM7 A.S. has a limit of 100. Is this scalable? Could we, for example, get to 200 connections if we had another license and somehow bridged the two?

I know this is a lot of questions, but help at this early stage will be greatly appreciated and will probably save me a lot of headaches down the road.

Thanks,

Dan

[Garry Claridge]

Dan,

Currently, FM web pages (Format Files) are stored in the "Web" folder within the FM folder. However, these are not used with XML; XSLT files can be used.

To access the database and display data with CDML you can use a URL or a Form. For example:

http://myaddr/FMPro?-db=mydb.fp5&-format=listing.html&surname=smith&-find

or

<form action="FMPro" method="POST">

<input type="hidden" name="-db" value="mydb.fp5">

<input type="hidden" name="-format" value="listing.html">

Enter Name: <input type="text" name="surname" value="">

<input type="submit" name="-find" value="Find Name">

</form>

To return XML you would use:

http://myaddr/FMPro?-db=mydb.fp5&-format=-fmp_xml&surname=smith&-find

or

<form action="FMPro" method="POST">

<input type="hidden" name="-db" value="mydb.fp5">

<input type="hidden" name="-format" value="-fmp_xml">

Enter Name: <input type="text" name="surname" value="">

<input type="submit" name="-find" value="Find Name">

</form>

You cannot use CWP and IWP together.

ColdFusion is a very powerful middleware (should work fine with FM). PHP is an alternative, it is readily available and quite capable!

FX is a php class which makes working with FM relatively easy. However, it is not necessary.

Hope this gives you a bit of an insight. All the best.

Garry

[DanBrill]

Thanks Garry. This helps get me started. It seems that products like Dreamweaver might be more interested in working easily with FM if FM would bother to get its ODBC drivers working right. Best to dig into the 1,000s of pages of reading I need to do.

Thanks again,

Dan

[Steve T.]

Cool! DanBrill will be joining us in the online forums! Welcome to FM-on-the-web world!

Looks like you've done quite a bit of research already, but here are some more A's to Q's (as best as I can recall)...

I think I've used IWP and CWP at the same time under pre-FM7 but CWP can use the Web Security Database whereas IWP relies on Access Privileges, but I don't really use IWP so cannot say for sure.. I just tested things while answering some posts. IWP is apparently much-improved in FM7 but I'd agree that you're' probably still going to want to do some CWP, even if it is w/XML/XLST.

FX is a PHP class, i.e. it is a bunch of functions and methods that Chris Hansen has put together and made available that allows you to interact w/your FM db without having to write all your own code for any actions you want to do. I have not used it yet but if you go the PHP route, I'd recommend downloading it for reference if not flat out use it. I think he teamed up w/FMWebSchools and they came out w/a Dreamweaver plug-in, but I have not used that, either.

If you use PHP, I'm assuming that you would be using Apache to serve your website so the number of connections would be set by your httpd.conf configuration file, too. Your entire site is probably not going to be dynamic and db-driven, so that might free up connections if non-FM stuff does not have to take FM connections.

As you've noticed, this is a weird transition time for FM on the web. It'll be interesting to see what things will be like a year or two from now.

Glad to have you among the webheads! By then, YOU'LL be one of the ones helping folks w/their "How can I publish my db on the web?" questions.

--ST

[DanBrill]

Thanks, Steve. It looks like CWP is the path I'll be on. Just got the book on FM 6 and xml. I'm really interested in that dreamweaver plug-in too. I'll have many more questions to ask before I have a prayer of answering any.

So does one use either xml or php, or some combination of the two?

Thanks,

Dan

[Garry Claridge]

Re: So does one use either xml or php, or some combination of the two?

It can be a combination of the two. You can use XSLT (style sheets) to transform the XML to an html page. Alternatively, you can use PHP to repurpose the XML data. You could even use them together.

All the best.

Garry

[Fenton]

There's an article in the recent FileMaker Advisor magazine about using the Site Assistant tool that comes with Server Advanced. It looks like it would be useful for creating a basic site using XSLT. You choose some options in dialogs, like which layout to use for list view, which for a detail form view, which for edits, which for searches, and it builds the pages, incl. a home page if you want. The result is probably pretty simple and not real attractive, but it would be a good way for a beginner to get a jump start, and for an intermediate webber to save time.

If you prettied it up, and added some JavaScript for a few things, it seems you'd have something you could use for a simple site.

PHP using the FX plug-in approach also looks like a good route. It looks fairly simple to use. It would quickly get non-simple if you had to manually edit much of the code though. I imagine this is the fastest performer for raw speed on the web.?

I'm not much experienced with these things (and I don't have Server Advanced so I can't test the above), but either path looks promising. I imagine an expert could combine the approaches, using whatever was appropriate. Wowie zowie.