web services posting xml

[Joost Miltenburg]

Hi All,

 

I was tasked with building a solution to communicate with a web service. I have to my disposal :

FMAdv 13

Fmnexus plugin

WDSL for the web service.

Server certificate for this web service 

 

With this solution I have to post xml to the web service ( over https ) and then parse the xml again. The producing and parsing of the xml should not be a problem. However, I am not sure of three things :

1. Is the filemaker 13 http-post function capable of posting xml ? or is this just a simple tool ?

2. Does anyone know the state of the FMNexus plugin ? The website where we used to be able to get the plugin just says it has not been tested.

3. Is there a better alternative for a plugin that can do this. I have heard about the baseElements plugin ; is this plugin capable of doing this ?

 

Thanks in advance !

[comment]

Is the filemaker 13 native solution capable of this ?

 

I am afraid you need to be more specific regarding what "this" is.

[Joost Miltenburg]

Yes, that was careless...

 

Is the http-post function introduced in FM13 capable of this ?

 

http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11626/~/support-for-http-post-operations-in-filemaker-pro

[comment]

I believe it is, but you're still not telling us exactly what "this" involves. The part that seems to me as potentially problematic is the posting of XML data: there is no native functionality to produce XML "in memory", so you might have to hack it using text functions.

[Joost Miltenburg]

Yes, that was what I was referring to. It seems that the posting of xml with http-post is problematic, but as I don't have any experience with this new function, I can't be sure.

[comment]

It seems that the posting of xml with http-post is problematic

 

I don't think it's any more problematic than posting key/value pairs (as shown in the example here: http://www.filemaker.com/help/13/fmp/en/html/non_toc.46.34.html#1079151). It's just that there's more room for error when you are forming XML manually.

 

In any case, I suggest you try it and see what problems you run into.

[Joost Miltenburg]

The problem I am currently running into is dat every time I post to the url, I get :

 

<h2>403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.</h2>

  <h3>You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.</h3>

 

Could this have to do with FileMaker Pro and communicating with a certificate ?

[Wim Decorte]

some web services require you to log in first and then use a token for the rest of the communications.  Is this one of those?

[comment]

Could this have to do with FileMaker Pro and communicating with a certificate ?

 

Possibly. Although "FileMaker cannot perform a certificate check to verify that the server that you specify is the server that replies", so it's more likely that you are not supplying the correct credentials correctly.

 

Have you tried posting using other means, e.g. cURL or the BE plugin (also using cURL as its engine, I believe)?

 

[brianrich]

Goya Pty's Base Elements plug-in might provide an alternative to the FMNexus plug-in.  It's free to download and use. (Thanks Nick)

 

https://github.com/nickorr/BaseElements-Plugin/wiki/Functions

 

HTH

 

Brian

[Joost Miltenburg]

The FMNexus plugin seems to be more or less dead in the water.

I currently hope I can use the Monkeybread plugin ( over 2700+ functions ). It seems to have quite a lot of cURL support. I don't know cURL, so if anyone here knows something about that. In any case cURL seems to be better known in the world than FM