Detecting particular Hardware from FileMaker

[fmbug]

Dear All,

I am working with a client. He needs that his all the data should be in a pendrive. And when he insert the pendrive in his machine. It should be detected and all the data should be visible in FileMaker. And After removing the pendrive, it should show no records, means the number of records should be zero(0). After insertion of pendrive, again the records should be visible.

I just want that, is there any way to achieve this task. or is there any way to detect the pendrive with its physical name.

For example: I want a field in my layout as a (Name or something that will be the unque) Calculation field of that particular pendrive.

Looking forward for your positive response as soon as possible.

[Karsten Wolf]

That's very descriptive...

What is the data on the pen-drive, which I assume goes elsewhere as thumb-drive or USB-Stick?

Does the data need to be imported? Can it be hidden in the database?

Why doesn't he just copy the FileMaker file onto the drive?

[Karsten Wolf]

Posted too quick. Second part.

Yes that can be done on OSX.

You build an application that gets notified when a new drive gets mounted. Checks for the right drive. Imports the data via AppleEvents. Checks every few seconds if the FileMaker Database has changed. If a change is detected, it will be appended to a log-file on the drive which will be merged on import.

That's the rough sketch of what I would do. But first, I would try to talk the customer out of it because I think it's a bad idea. If he insists and pays for it...

[fmbug]

I didn't get exactly, what you meant to say. please describe you vision properly.

[Karsten Wolf]

For your task you need FileMaker to become active on external triggers. An application or a plugin are the only choices I know of.

I would write an application for that.

Using Python with PyobjC and appscript is my preference. Apple's AppKit has a notification system (NSNotification) that can be used to detect drives when they are mounted.

appscript is a library for AppleEvents which also exists for Ruby and ObjectiveC and can be used to controll FileMaker for getting the data from the drive or writing it back.

[Kris M]

Use the data seperation model to develop the solution and put the data file on the removable drive?