Custom Web Publishing Guide

Table Of Contents
Chapter 3
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Accessing XML data with the Web Publishing Engine 25
General process for accessing XML data from the Web Publishing Engine
Here is an overview of the process for using the Web Publishing Engine to access XML data in a FileMaker
database:
1. In the Web Publishing Engine Administration Console, make sure XML Publishing is enabled. See
FileMaker Server Advanced Web Publishing Installation Guide.
2. In FileMaker Pro, open each FileMaker database that you’re publishing and make sure the database has
the
fmxml extended privilege enabled for XML Custom Web Publishing. See “Enabling Custom Web
Publishing in a database” on page 19.
To access XML data in a portal, set the view for the database layout to View as Form or View as List. If a
user or script changes the view of the database layout to
View as Table, only the first related record (first
row of the portal) is accessible as XML data.
The XML data is output in an order that corresponds to the order in which field objects were added to
the layout. If you want the XML data order to match the order in which fields appear on the screen (top-
to-bottom, left-to-right order), then select all fields, group them, and then ungroup them. This procedure
resets the layout order to match the screen order.
3. Send an HTTP or HTTPS request in the form of a URL that specifies the FileMaker XML grammar, one
query command, and one or more FileMaker query parameters to the Web Publishing Engine through an
HTML form, an HREF link, or a script in your program or web page. You can also type the URL in a
web browser.
For information on specifying the URL, see the next section, “About the URL syntax for XML data and
container objects.” For information on query commands and parameters, see “Using FileMaker query
strings to request XML data” on page 36, and appendix A, “Valid names used in query strings.”
4. The Web Publishing Engine uses the grammar you specified in the URL to generate XML data
containing the results of your request, such as a set of records from the database, and returns it to your
program or web browser.
5. The web browser, if it has an XML parser, displays the data, or the program uses the data in the way you
specified.
If you specified a client-side stylesheet, the web browser parser also applies the stylesheet instructions.
See
“Using server-side and client-side processing of stylesheets” on page 39.
About the URL syntax for XML data and container objects
This section describes the URL syntax for using the Web Publishing Engine to access XML data and
container objects from FileMaker databases. The URL syntax for using XSLT stylesheets is different from
XML. See
About the URL syntax for FileMaker XSLT stylesheets” on page 52 and About the URL syntax
for FileMaker container objects in XSLT solutions” on page 53.