CDML Reference Materials/Resources

[CaelC]

I have been using Filemaker for many years and am proficient in HTML. I want to combine my skills and host my company's online store inside FMP. What is the best way to learn CDML? There doesn't seem to be much info on it. Will I be able to figure it out or does it require higher knowledge of programming?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Cael.

[dickiedyce]

The way I learned it was actually to use Homepage to builld a off the shelf website, and then take it apart - keepinng a very close eye on the two FM libraries that come with Homepage. I think you can still download Homepage on a 30 day trial, and that it ships with the Developer version of FM. Nowaday, if I do an CDML I write it from BBEdit.

The Kinitting Factory demo work quitte well, and you can probably figure out some of the e-commerce issues from there.

One trick I should mention is that you can use the FMP-IF structure to use the same page as both the result of a successful find as well as report an error. It produces a cleaner interface with fewer HTML filles. It's obvious I suppose, but it took me a couple of days to get the hang of. :-)

[antz]

Try the book "Database publishing with Filemaker Pro on the web" ISBN No.0-201-69665-7. With this you'll be able to download an online store example to take apart. Amazon sell this title.

Cheers Antz.

[Keith M. Davie]

I'm in the process of developing format files and databases using FMP 4.0v3. Like you I feel quite proficient in FMPro (self taught) and I learned html (on-line thru the J.C. here). I write all my format files from scratch. Like you, I find that the FMP/cdml documentation is horrid. I am learning cdml as I go.

First, print out the cdml reference in your FMP folder and read it. Next get the book recommended in another response and "FileMaker Pro 4 and the World Wide Web" (Feiler). Both have uses, though there is a lot of duplication. Neither has a very useful index.

What I have come to, and what I have found useful for self-teaching, is to develop bare-bones format files in which I display all of the fields which one has available, even though they may not be fields will display in the end product. I also display all the cdml tags which are being passed from page to page (example "<p> You are in db: [fmp-currentdatabase: html]", and "<p>The currenttoken is: [fmp-currenttoken]", etc) I have found this especially useful in understanding how tokens are being passed and making sure everything is working.

Sometimes I have run into problems which have required some creative energies to solve, but everything keeps working out, and it gets easier and easier. For instance, got my first "-edit" action to work today when I realized that "-recid" was a required tag, and I had not included it. Made the inclusion and badabing, badabong, the appropriate db/record/field was edited.

Some of it is, till you do it the examples available aren't all that clear and once you've done it the examples are quite transparent.

Most difficult was locating one line of script necessary to perform a find which required a match in two fields. I kept looking for that and found the answer at filemaker.com/support in a document on names and passwords. Took six weeks 'cause I kept looking for and asking about "two fields" search/find criteria, not "names and passwords" search/find criteria. But then, I did not name any of my fields "password".

When I get all of this to work and interact, beginning to end, it will be a simple matter of editing the format files to delete unwanted displays and to insert the text/images etc for the final product.

I am using several db's in my application, and am running FMP scripts from the format files quite nicely. Some of it takes a bit of creativity.

Lots of Luck. Have fun. It will seem quite daunting at times. There is no easy way.

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Keith M. Davie