Accessing ActiveX Controls

[CCBtx]

Does anyone know if FileMaker provides a way to access an ActiveX control from withing a filemaker script?

Edited August 30, 2006 by Guest

[Genx]

The answer is plain and simple no... not in any standard way anyway

Though... if you go to www.grokittools.com you'll find an excellent and fairly cheap (all things considered) VBScript plugin ... that lets you do anything you want with vbscript (including interact with an activeX object).. and return the result directly to FM. This is specifically what i use it for, it tool me about 2 hours to re-engineer all my scripts, and i can tell you now, its absolutley awesome.

BUT...

It depends on whether you want any feedback into FM though... if you don't you could always just export some vbs script to a vbs file and execute that.

Before VBScript plug, i would get the VBS to write a result to a text file and have FM trying to import that text file in a loop (effectively simulating a plugin -- at around 15*the duration) -- exiting if it's successful.. while this worked, its error level was too high, and on some computers, exporting the vbs script with (open on export checked) would return errors that the file didn't exist.

Anyway just a few things to keep in mind.

[CCBtx]

Excellent. I suspected that was the answer and was hoping you would reply with a plugin suggestion. Alternatively, I believe you can invoke an ActiveX control in an html page. I wonder if this means that I could invoke the control with 8.5 using the web viewer?

[Wim Decorte]

Like Genx said, it depends if you want anything returned to FM. If not, you may be able to use the web viewer... however: the security settings for IE may prevent it from working properly. And you'd still need to write out the HTML with embedded VBScript in it to make it work.

[Genx]

True, have you ever gone to a website that tries to run VBS on your computer and not had it (sometimes not so annoyingly) blocked?

I suppose you could just write some code to make a new html doc and load that with the result...and parse that out... again though... the plugin is sooo cheap, and while it has it's own security issues, all you have to do is turn off one thing in the anti virus software (if the client has any at all).

[aholtzapfel]

I have been "playing" with the web viewer in 8.5 in order to extract info off of web sites (I use usps.com to Standerdize and Verify Addresses) and with only the web viewer and a Filemaker Script I have been able to get the info and update the database quickly and easily. You can get the HTML of a web page from the attributes script step and Filter the Values you want by a Calulation. The only problem I have come across in this solution is that there is not a way to tell if the web page has finished loading. (the source attribute is blank until the page begins to load and then it sets the value, but it can be any many seconds after this before the page has fully loaded and the info you want to extract is avalible.

(Only reason I post this here is because in 8.0 I had used vbs w/ activeX to extract the info and return it, this worked well but there was at least twice as many errors that had to be captured in order to insure it Worked and security updates, antivirus Software, .... could all prevent it from working)