Developer’s Guide

8-18 Developer’s Guide
To set up your computer to act as a single-machine network, enable
and activate TCP/IP networking. On Windows machines, this is
usually already set up for you (if you can connect to the Internet, then
TCP/IP networking is active). On Mac OS machines, one way to set
up TCP/IP networking is to create a new TCP/IP control panel
configuration that connects via Ethernet to any IP address manually.
(For information on setting up TCP/IP networking, see the
documentation that came with your operating system.)
Once you’ve set up your computer to act as a single-machine
network, you can type http://localhost in your web browser
and the FileMaker Pro Web Companion will serve the HTML pages
that are located in the Web folder as well as any open databases that
are shared via the Web Companion—without connecting to the
Internet or intranet.
Tip To thoroughly test your web site, click on every link that exists
in your custom web pages under every possible situation, with your
databases open, with (and without) any records existing in each
database. Did you catch all the errors and create an error message for
each of them?
Opening password-protected
databases remotely
You can open and close FileMaker Pro databases from your web
browser or other client application by making a –dbopen or –dbclose
request to FileMaker Pro.
Note You can also open and close FileMaker Pro databases remotely
by using the DbOpen and DbClose pseudo procedures with the
FileMaker JDBC Driver. See
“Using DbOpen and DbClose pseudo
procedures” on page 11-5 for information.
The databases must be located in the Web folder and the Web
Companion Configuration dialog box must have Remote
Administration enabled. In addition, you should require a remote
administration password to ensure that once databases are opened,
they cannot be closed by an unauthorized user.
The Web Companion uses HTTP basic authentication to enforce web
security. When a –dbopen request is made to FileMaker Pro, the
browser or client application displays the basic user name/password
dialog box where you type
admin for the user name and the remote
administration password that you specified in the Web Companion
Configuration dialog box.
For databases that also have an access privileges password, you must
use the –password parameter with the –dbopen request. After you
enter the admin user name and remote administration password, the
Web Companion checks the –password parameter in the request.
Tip For better security, place your databases in subfolders within the
Web folder. This way, unauthorized users will not know the rest of
the path even if they gain access to the Web folder.
Opening and closing databases using XML
Here is an example of making a –dbopen request using an XML
document:
FMPro?–db=secretfolder/employees.fp5&–format=–fmp_xml&
–password= dbpassword&–dbopen
Here is an example of making a –dbclose request using an XML
document:
FMPro?–db=secretfolder/employees.fp5&–format=–fmp_xml&–dbclose
For more information, see “Generating FileMaker Pro CGI requests
for an XML document” on page 10-8 and chapter B, “Valid names
used in CGI requests for FileMaker Pro XML data.”