Looking for advise - File Maker Pro 12 to communicate with remote PHP scripts

[kobatechnologies]

Hi,

 

We're new to File Maker, so we're still unsure the best way to handle this.

 

We run a spa and we have our employees follow our guests during their week with us. Our employees carry i-pads and record certain data and images on our File Maker Pro 12 database. We also have an online PHP/MySQL website with database that all of our employees can use remotely.

 

What we hope to achieve is that when our employees record certain data on their i-pads, the File Maker software communicates that data to a PHP script on our remote website (via XML, POST, etc), and our PHP scripts on the remote website handles the data from there.

 

Any advise is appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Konrad

[dansmith65]

Are you using FileMaker server? Is the FileMaker database stored on the iPad, or accessed over a network? Do images need to be transferred?

[kobatechnologies]

We're using FileMaker Pro 12 which is accessed over a network. Yes, along with data, some images would also need to be transferred.

[dansmith65]

With that setup, there are three main tasks involved:

1. Get a script to run from FileMaker Pro on a set schedule which can process new/changed records
2. Find a plug-in that will allow sending a container image in an http post request
3. Write server-side code on your remote website that processes the above post request

Task 1

• If you upgrade to FileMaker Server, this won't be an issue, as you can schedule a script to run on a set schedule from within the server software. Using FileMaker Server also gives you the option to access the database directly from your web application via PHP, which may allow you to extract the data you need, rather than have it "pushed" from FileMaker.
• Look into using a "robot" computer. This involves a FileMaker file defined to open another file, perform a script, then close. This file is scheduled to be opened by an OS-level task scheduler
• Another option is a cron-style scheduler via a plug-in module I wrote for the ScriptMaster plugin: https://github.com/dansmith65/ooScriptMaster

Task 2

• I haven't done this before, so can't recommend any plug-in's that would do this