Developer’s Guide

Table Of Contents
Enabling the FileMaker Pro Web
Companion (Mac OS X)
Note For instructions on enabling the FileMaker Pro Web
Companion in Mac OS 9.x or earlier, see chapter 14 of the
FileMaker Pro User’s Guide.
The Developer edition of FileMaker Pro uses the FileMaker Pro
Web Companion plug-in to serve databases over the Web.
To enable the Web Companion in Mac OS X:
1. Start the FileMaker Developer application.
2. Choose the FileMaker Developer application menu > Preferences >
Application.
3. In the Application Preferences dialog, click the Plug-Ins tab.
4. Select the Web Companion checkbox.
After you enable the Web Companion, you must specify which port
number, or virtual connection, the Web Companion will use to
publish data.
Installing FileMaker Developer in the Mac OS 3-5
The first time you enable the Web Companion, FileMaker Pro
displays the following dialog, which requests permission to make a
one-time change to your computer’s setting to facilitate web
publishing on a port number below 1024.
The standard port number for web publishing is 80 (ports are
numbered between 1 and 65535), and most web servers and browsers
use this port as the default. Port 80 is also the default port for the
FileMaker Pro Web Companion. For security reasons, Mac OS X
restricts access to ports below 1024. To configure the FileMaker Pro
Web Companion to use ports below 1024 while maintaining the
Mac OS X access restrictions on these ports, it is necessary to make
a one-time change to the file permissions of the Web Companion
Enabler to give it the authority to open privileged ports (ports 1-
1023). To make this change, you will need an administrator
password, such as the password created when you first set up
Mac OS X.
Note If you use a port other than port number 80 for FileMaker Pro
web publishing, your users will need to append a colon (“:”) and the
number of the port to their URLs to access your web hosted
databases. For more information, see
“Accessing databases that are
published to the Web” on page 3-7.