Reference local file from hosted files.

[kerver]

I did a trial conversion of my solution to FileMaker 8.0 and I'm having an issue that maybe somebody can shed some light on. My solution consist of FileMaker Server hosting a bunch of files and each user has a local file for opening the database and logging in. This local file is referred back to many times in every hosted file. The hosted files reference the local file with an absolute path which happens to be my hard drive and my directories. In FileMaker 6 the hosted files always find each users local file although the reference is pointing to my specific machine. In FileMaker 7/8 the local file cannot be found unless I reference each users specific directory. I've tried many different variations of the file reference but can't seem to find the magic combination. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thank You

[Ender]

The file reference in the launcher files should be referring to the ip address (or name) of the hosting computer. The format should look like:

fmnet:/10.0.0.23/hostedfile.fp7

Trying to get the hosted files to see local files could be a little trickier, but you might try the relative path first:

file:/localfile.fp7

or if that doesn't work, try the full path references for your clients' OS:

filemac:/volumeName/directoryName/localfile.fp7

filewin:/driveletter:/directoryName/localfile.fp7

This should work if the volume names and path to the file is the same on all client machines.

[kerver]

Thanks for the response. I've tried using the relative path and it fails. The full path reference for each user spread across 60 files is not a realistic solution. If a new user comes onboard I would have to add the file reference for his local file to each hosted file.

[Ender]

If all your users have the same account name in OSX, they will have the same path (as long as the file is in the same relative location.) If your users have different OSX account names, you might try putting the launcher file in the Applications or FileMaker folder (setting permissions as needed.) This way the file would have the same local path from machine to machine.

Or you might make your launcher file less integrated with the other files. Have it only responsible for opening one hosted Main Menu file. Then your other hosted files will only need to refer to the hosted Main Menu to get the user back to doing other things.

[Fenton]

I don't really see why the hosted files need to reference back to the local starter file, but I assume you have a reason; and there are other cases where you might want to do this. One location which is fairly uniform in most OS X systems (besides the FileMaker app folder which Ender mentioned) is the "Macintosh HD/Users/Shared" folder; it doesn't contain the user name. If you need to access the file from a more user-friendly location you can create an alias to it, then put that on the user's desktop. I think that would work fine.

[kerver]

Thank you for your responses. After talking to FileMaker and reading these posts it would appear that FileMaker 7/8 has lost the ability to find a local file without having an explicit file path. I will use your suggestions and place the file in the application folder or shared folder (making sure all users have the same HD name) and then I'll work on hosting a new file to replace the local file's functionality.