Scripting Favorite Hosts Changes?

[Tony Martin]

Hi everyone.

Wanted to know if anyone has ever created a script that can open a remote database and (assuming that user has the privileges) either change or run a script that can change the IP address or hostname of an existing favorite host?

Any help would be appreciated! I have many users who can barely drive :

[fseipel]

Under Windows the Favorites hosts used to be stored in FMHosts.txt; now it is in the Registry in current versions, so if you run regedit you'll see entries of the form:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareFileMakerFileMaker Pro11.0AFavHostInfoEntry0]

"Address"=""

"DisplayName"=""

"FileOption"=dword:00000001

You can edit this, but only when FM isn't running -- because FM loads the keys only at startup, and overwrites them only when you exit FM. It does not access the key in between. Changes are further complicated by the path being different based on version.

Perhaps a better way to achieve this would be to use LDAP, or use the router to map a domain, say, FMDB, to an IP address or namespace. Then all computers will map to the new FMDB location. Alternately, you can use an opener file on the LAN to open the remote database with a script that runs when file opens. This opener could even present a menu of the available files.

On mac Favorite hosts are stored in the XML segment of the preferences file, changes to which are well described here: http://campsoftware.com/blog/generate-filemaker-favorite-hosts-xml/

It would be nice if the FM installer would copy the old prefs over and use a uniform format for both platforms.

To open hosts via script, see http://www.filemaker.com/help/html/sharing_data.15.6.html