[FX.php List] calling scripts from FX help

[Greg Lane]

The plug-in SDK does allow for plug-ins on the server. I don't know  
what the limitations are with server plug-ins, but it could be worth  
exploring.

Another option would be to use the ODBC/JDBC interface. According to  
the FileMaker ODBC/JDBC Developer's Guide (p 28), you can retrieve  
the contents of a container field with something like:

     SELECT GetAs(Company_Logo, 'JPEG') FROM Sales_Data

The tricky part is to get PHP working with the ODBC drivers. I've had  
success on Windows but my initial efforts failed on OS X.

An ugly workaround would be to have a dedicated machine with FMP  
running a looping script that continually looks for flagged records  
and when it finds a flagged record, it exports the field contents,  
does an scp to copy the file to your webserver, and then clears the  
flag. Then your PHP script just has to set the flag in the  
appropriate record and wait for the file to appear. This approach can  
be used for a lot of different things, but it can be fragile. You  
could always have your PHP script send an email to you if the file  
doesn't appear in a reasonable amount of time. Then you can fix the  
FMP machine before the users start calling. :)

Greg


On Oct 21, 2005, at 7:17 AM, Michael Layne wrote:

> Thanks... I had a feeling that was the case.  It's pretty  
> important, so I'd probably be interested in seeing a workaround  
> (even an ugly one).
>
> The example was just a text file, but the requirement is for  
> anything (mostly .doc, .xls, .pdf).  On the client side, there's a  
> custom plug-in that kicks off the launch of the selected document,  
> and supposedly it works through IWP, which is what we're trying to  
> avoid due to the access limits (100 concurrent users).
>
> If you think it's possible to write a small plug-in to allow the  
> script to be called from FMSA, I have a resource I can tap.   
> Otherwise, ugly sounds good.