Custom Web Publishing with XML and XSLT

Table Of Contents
Chapter 7
Staging, testing, and monitoring a site
This chapter provides instructions for staging and testing a Custom Web Publishing site before deploying it
in a production environment. Instructions are also provided for using log files to monitor the site during
testing or after deployment.
Staging a Custom Web Publishing site
Before you can properly test your site, you must copy or move the required files to the correct locations on
the staging server(s).
To stage your site and prepare it for testing:
1. Complete all of the steps outlined in chapter 3, “Preparing databases for Custom Web Publishing.”
2. Check that XSLT and XML have been enabled and properly configured in the FileMaker Server Admin
Console.
Note For instructions, see the FileMaker Server Help.
3. Verify that the web server and the Web Publishing Engine are running.
4. Copy or move the XSLT stylesheets to the machine on which the Web Publishing Engine resides.
Copy or move the XSLT stylesheets to the following directory on the Web Publishing Engine machine:
1 Apache (Mac OS): /Library/FileMaker Server 9/Web Publishing/xslt-template-files
1 IIS (Windows): <drive>:\Program Files\FileMaker\FileMaker Server 9\Web Publishing\xslt-template-files
where <drive> is the primary drive from which the system is started.
Note You can also place the stylesheets in an optional folder or folder hierarchy in the xslt-template-files
folder.
5. Copy or move any referenced container objects to the web server machine.
If a database container field stores a file reference instead of an actual file, then the referenced container
object must be stored in the FileMaker Pro Web folder when the record is created or edited. To stage your
site, you must copy or move the referenced containers to a folder with the same relative location in the
root folder of the web server software.
Note If the database file is properly hosted and accessible on the Database Server component of the
FileMaker Server deployment, and the container fields store the actual files in the FileMaker database,
then you don’t need to relocate the container field contents.
6. Use the following URL syntax to request and process an XSLT stylesheet, and generate the resulting
HTML:
<scheme>://<host>[:<port>]/fmi/xsl/<path>/<stylesheet>.xsl[?<query string>]
where:
1 <scheme> is the HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
1 <host> is the IP address or domain name of the host computer where the web server is installed.