I am having a hard time understanding the http requests and XML importing.

I have a inventory database that stores book info like UPC/ISBN, title, and author.

I have two things I am trying to get done. When a user scans or types in the upc I would like Filemaker first to check the internal database for the book and if it does not find it then submit a http request, import the returning xml, and display the information listed above.

The http request must be made in the following format.

http://isbndb.com/api/books.xml?access_key=12345678&index1=isbn&value1=0596002068

In this request 2 strings are needed. The access key which does not change and is unique and the ISBN which is entered as described above.



The returned XML looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>



 

  

   Interesting Book

   Interesting Book: Read it or else..

   John Doe

   Acme Publishing

  

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Zach

We had something like this before. The attached is an xsl stylesheet which will transform the above xml results to FileMaker syntax for importing directly, using the Import XML step.

The rest is just getting them to enter the ISBN, like into a global field, then doing either a Find or a relational test to see if you've got it. If not, use Import XML, with the xsl stylesheet specified, to get the book data into FileMaker.

Let us know if you need more help. I don't know how much of the above you can do yourself (and I'm feeling lazy right now :-]

isbn_book_short.xsl.zip