I'm fairly new to Filemaker (using FM 13) and trying to build a solution that'll compare what my company has in stock, with what our website says we have in stock. Everyday we do a physical count (inventory) on around 100 items, and we need to compare that with what the website says we have. 

 

My solution has a field for what the website says (for each item). Thought that the Insert From URL function would do the trick, but as I am so new to Filemaker, I can't figure out how to parse the data. I need to pull one number from the webpage. The code from the webpage is: (note: ignore extra spaces in code below):

 

< p class = " inventory " >  < span class = " inventoryCnt " >  3 in stock  < / span >

 

I need to grab that number (inventoryCnt) 3 from the webpage and put it in my Filemaker field.

 

From the Filemaker website I found this about the Insert from URL function; http://www.filemaker.com/help/12/fmp/html/scripts_ref1.36.46.html

 

I think the basic code would look something like this:

[select; No dialog; <table name::inventoryCnt>; webpage address]

 

However, that doesn't work and I am lost on how to correctly parse this out this webpage. Can any of you FileMaker experts walk me through the steps to do this? Would sincerely appreciate it!

 

You should try and avoid web-scraping, if you possibly can.  If it's your company's website and your company's data, then there should be a more robust and reliable way to get at it.

 

If not, see if this can get you started:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/94586-web-scraping-getting-text-between-two-text-strings/?p=432656