Best way to generate XML from FileMaker database

[jackinva]

Folks,

I'm getting ready to work on a process to get data out of a FileMaker Pro 9 database. The goal is to set up a process to export selected records in an XML standard for image metadata (in my case VRA Core). I'm wondering what people have done in the past with generating XML from FM 9. I was thinking of using FM 9's PHP API to make the process web based. The other option is to build the process into the FM Pro database using the FM ScriptMaker features, but I'm not sure how robust this would be for linking tables grabbing different fields for use in exporting as XML. Any thoughts on the best way to do custom XML exporting would be appreciated.

FYI, I've not worked with FM version 9 before. I've been working with version 6 and have done most of my automation using AppleScript and used FX.php once for some work with FM 6. I would like to avoid using AppleScript now so that the automation process set up can be platform independent.

Thanks in advance,

Jack

[Wim Decorte]

The standard way of doing this would be to export directly from FM using one of FM's XML grammars and then use an XSLT stylesheet to transform FM's XML grammar into your destination XML grammar.

Or if this is server-side, you could write an intermediate app in your preferred choice of tools and use FMS' XML interface to get the data out and then again transform the FM XML grammar into what it needs to be.

[comment]

I'm not sure how robust this would be for linking tables grabbing different fields for use in exporting as XML

I am not aware of any special problems with exporting related data.

[jackinva]

Thanks for the suggestions. In looking at the XML export feature in FMPro 9 on my computer, it looks like I can only export one table at a time? Or is it possible to export data from multiple tables at once if they are related through some undocumented feature? Is this something that can be done from the FM server version of the software?

[comment]

You can only export FROM one table at a time, but you can include fields from related tables in the export. The result can be a "flat" file with redundant data (if you export from the child table) or a "nested" file (if you export from the parent).