Administrator’s Guide
Table Of Contents
- Preface Introducing FileMaker Pro 5.5 Unlimited
- Chapter 1 Installing the FileMaker Web Server Connector
- Chapter 2 Administering the Web Server Connector
- Chapter 3 Publishing your database on the Web
- Types of web publishing
- Using the FileMakerPro Web Companion
- Creating a custom home page
- Creating a custom home page for Instant Web Publishing
- Creating a custom web site using a database layout
- Web Companion support for Internet mediatypes
- Monitoring your site
- Exporting data to a static HTML page
- Testing your site without a networkconnection
- Opening password-protected databasesremotely
- Chapter 4 Custom web publishing using CDML
- About the CDML examples
- General steps for custom web publishing using CDML
- About CDML format files
- Generating FileMakerPro CGI requests using CDML
- Using the CDML Tool and templates
- Modified CDML tags
- About the CDML Reference database
- Creating error messages
- Using an encoding parameter with a CDML replacement tag
- Planning your web site
- Chapter 5 Using FileMakerPro XML to deliver your data
- About the XML examples
- General process for custom web publishing using XML
- Generating an XML document
- Using the FMPDSORESULT grammar
- Using the FileMakerPro Extended XMLgrammars
- About UTF-8 encoded data
- Generating FileMakerPro CGI requests for an XML document
- Using style sheets with your XMLdocument
- Comparing CSS, XSLT, and JavaScript
- Looking at the XML Inventory example
- Chapter 6 Using Java and JDBC to deliver your data
- About the JDBC examples
- About JDBC
- Using the FileMaker JDBC Driver
- SQL supported by the FileMaker JDBCDriver
- FileMakerPro support for Unicodecharacters
- About the FileMaker JDBC Driver interfaces and extensions
- Example 1: Looking at the FileMakerPro Explorer application
- Example 2: Creating the JBuilder Inventoryapplication
- Example 3: Creating the Visual Cafe Inventory application
- Using the FileMaker Java classes
- Appendix A Valid names used in CGI requests for FileMaker XML data
- Generating a –find, –findall, or –findany request
- Generating a –view request
- Generating a –new request
- Generating an –edit request
- Generating a –delete request
- Generating a –dbnames request
- Generating a –layoutnames request
- Generating a –scriptnames request
- Generating a –dbopen request
- Generating a –dbclose request
- Specifying parameters for the request
- –db (Database)
- –lay (Layout)
- –format (Format)
- –recid (Record ID)
- –modid (Modification ID)
- –lop (Logical operator)
- –op (Comparison operator)
- –max (Maximum records)
- –skip (Skip records)
- –sortfield (Sort field)
- –sortorder (Sort order)
- –script (Script)
- –script.prefind (Script before Find)
- –script.presort (Script before Sort)
- –styletype (Style type)
- –stylehref (Style href)
- –password (Database password)
- field name (Name of specific field)
- Appendix B FileMaker Pro values for error codes
- Appendix C Enabling the FileMaker Pro Web Companion in MacOS X
- Index
3-18 FileMaker Pro 5.5 Unlimited Administrator’s Guide
FileMaker Pro saves the data in table format in an HTML file. Each
field you specified becomes a column heading in the table and each
record becomes a row.
Testing your site without a
network connection
You can set up your computer to test the Web Companion and your
web site before uploading your site files and databases to the host
web server or dialing up to an Internet service provider (ISP).
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 6-5 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.