Custom Web Publishing with XML and XSLT

Table Of Contents
46 FileMaker Server Custom Web Publishing with XML and XSLT
Using FileMaker XSLT Site Assistant to generate FileMaker XSLT stylesheets
FileMaker XSLT Site Assistant is an application you can use to create basic XSLT stylesheets as a starting
point for use with Custom Web Publishing with XSLT. XSLT Site Assistant is a good way to learn how
FileMaker XSLT stylesheets are constructed. You can then use your own XSLT stylesheet authoring or text
editing tools to modify the stylesheets as necessary. You cannot use XSLT Site Assistant to edit or update
existing stylesheets, but you can use XSLT Site Assistant to generate the initial stylesheets for an entire site,
or a single stylesheet to add basic functionality (such as deleting records) to an existing site.
You can use XSLT Site Assistant to generate XSLT stylesheets for all of the types of pages that are useful
for working with FileMaker databases via Custom Web Publishing. Depending on the options you choose
in XSLT Site Assistant, you can create a site that allows users to:
1 browse a single record at a time
1 view a list of all the records in the database
1 search the database and view the results in a list
1 sort records
1 add records
1 edit and duplicate records
1 delete records
1 view a summary report
You can also generate an optional home page that is linked to the other generated XSLT stylesheet pages.
The Web Publishing Engine uses each of your stylesheets to dynamically obtain data from a FileMaker
database whenever a web user sends an HTTP request and a URL that references one of your XSLT
stylesheets. The Web Publishing Engine uses a stylesheet to transform and format the XML data, and
generates the resulting HTML page that the web user can work with.
Note The XSLT Site Assistant stylesheets transform FileMaker XML data into HTML pages based on the
fmresultset XML grammar, which makes the stylesheets incompatible with other uses of XML
data such as
FileMaker Pro XML
export.
Before using XSLT Site Assistant
Before you can use XSLT Site Assistant to generate XSLT stylesheets for a database:
1 Set the extended privilege fmxslt in the database. Use privilege sets when running XSLT Site Assistant
that are equivalent to those you give to web users. See
“Enabling Custom Web Publishing in a database”
on page 19.
1 Open and host the database on the Database Server component of FileMaker Server. See
FileMaker
Server Help.
1 Be sure the web server component of the FileMaker Server deployment is running.
1 Be sure the Web Publishing Engine component of the FileMaker server deployment is running.
1 Enable XSLT Publishing in the Web Publishing Engine for using and testing the XSLT stylesheets. See
FileMaker
Server Help.