[FX.php List] dashboard widgets and fx.php

[Carl Anderson]

Bob:

I downloaded Dashcode two days ago, and with my admittedly limited
understanding of Ajax and whatnot, I was able to cobble together a decent
widget that pulls data via a call to a PHP script on our server.
(Essentially it's a Web service, but that's a different story.)

Right now the PHP script is doing nothing more than spitting out
line-by-line sets of data, but that's exactly what I want for my purposes.
Goals for this week, and the weeks following, are to expand this to allow
writing to a database as well as more complex formatting.

(Incidentally, it should be easy to write to a database, since it's just
like connecting to a PHP script.)

-- 
Carl Anderson 
Technical Support Analyst
Distance Learning 
Herberger College of Fine Arts
Arizona State University
http://herbergeronline.asu.edu


> From: Bob Patin <bob at patin.com>
> Reply-To: "FX.php Discussion List" <fx.php_list at mail.iviking.org>
> Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 18:26:06 -0600
> To: Alex Gates <alex at gandrpublishing.com>, "FX.php Discussion List"
> <fx.php_list at mail.iviking.org>
> Subject: Re: [FX.php List] dashboard widgets and fx.php
> 
> Alex,
> 
> Did you ever get this dashboard widget to work in pulling in records?
> 
> I'd like to write a few simple widgets; I have 3 projects in mind:
> 
> 1. I'd like to pull in simple records and display them in a table
> inside a widget
> 2. I'd like to be able to write to a database with a widget (long-
> shot, I know, but one can dream...)
> 
> To begin with though, I'd love to be able to display records; have
> you gotten that to work? My tests so far have failed miserably...
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Bob Patin
> Longterm Solutions
> bob at longtermsolutions.com
> 615-333-6858
> http://www.longtermsolutions.com
> 
>    CONTACT US VIA INSTANT MESSAGING:
>       AIM or iChat: longterm1954
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>       ICQ: 159333060
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 22, 2007, at 7:18 PM, Alex Gates wrote:
>> Hi everyone-
>> 
>> I managed to get something working today that I was quite pleased
>> with.
>> 
>> Most of you probably know that Apple released a beta of Dashcode -
>> the dashboard widget authoring tool that will be a part of Leopard.
>> You can download it here:
>> http://developer.apple.com/tools/dashcode/
>> (this is a newer version than the Dashcode that was leaked last year.)
>> 
>> There is a template that will allow you to make a widget from an
>> RSS feed... you can simply enter the URL for the RSS feed and
>> Dashcode will make everything work for you....
>> 
>> After a few tests today I was able to display FileMaker data in a
>> widget using fx.php
>> 
>> I made a php file that outputs an xml file -
>> like this:
>> -------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> <?xml version="1.0"?>
>> <rss version="2.0">
>>    <channel>
>>       <title>Web Tracker</title>
>> 
>>       <description>My Web Tracker</description>
>>       <language>en-us</language>
>> 
>> 
>> <?php
>> include_once('FX/FX.php');      
>> include_once('FX/server_data.php');
>> include_once('FX/FMErrors.php');
>> 
>> $lookup=new FX($serverIP,$webCompanionPort,'FMPro7');
>> $lookup->SetDBData('dbfile.fp7','layout');
>> $lookup->SetDBPassword('xxxxx','xxxxxx');
>> $lookupResult=$lookup->FMFindAll();
>> $foundResult=$lookupResult['foundCount'];
>> 
>> ?>
>> <?php echo "
>>       <item>
>> <title>Found Count:</title>
>> 
>>          <description>".$foundResult."</description>
>> 
>>       </item>";
>> ?>
>> 
>>  </channel>
>> </rss>
>> 
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 
>> I uploaded this file and used the URL to the php page as the .xml
>> address.  To my surprise, it worked.
>> 
>> I know this is simply showing the foundcount, but for a beginner, I
>> was happy.  I'm sure it would be possible to do lots of cool stuff....
>> 
>> As far as I know, it should be possible to take the xml output from
>> Web Publishing Engine to use for the widget... but I didn't think
>> about this until after I had done this...
>> 
>> I'd really be interested in hearing if any of you have made
>> dashboard widgets from FileMaker data and how you did it..... or if
>> you have any suggestions as to a better method...
>> 
>> Alex
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