Help needed for Remote ODBC data Access

[Treigh]

Hi,

I'm wondering if there's a way Filemaker can interact with a MYSQL database that is hosted on a remote web server and if so how?

My website isn't hosted locally. I can only access the MSQL database through a PHPMyAdmin portal that the hosting company made available for me.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Edited September 20, 2008 by Guest

[dreamingmind]

Treigh

I use SmartPill Editions to do this. I've found it to be the simplest way to make the connections and it has the advantage of adding the entire PHP language to FileMakers calculation engine.

http://www.scodigo.com/products/smartpill-php

This is such a huge addition!

Here's the php manual page on sql functions

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.mysql.php

Here's the page for array functions:

http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php

Imagine writing FM scripts to do some of those array tasks! I find those very useful.

And you can drop php classes written by other programmers into your solutions to gain all sorts of functionality. I use one that calculates holidays (including those crazy lunar calendar holidays like easter).

I also use SmartPill to trigger script when field content changes. You can get other plug ins for this, but why not get a whole programming language in the bargain.

It has functions to draw graphics, manipulate image files (it can resize jpegs for example, or tell the dimensions of an image).

It can write files to your drive.

I wrote a simple file system navigator in FM using SmartPill Editions.

Regards,

Don

Edited September 20, 2008 by Guest

[Garry Claridge]

Another method may be to use a PHP script on the hosting server as "go-between".

The PHP script can return purely text data that FM can do something with???

Good Luck.