[FX.php List] Re: FX.php and Global fields

[Bradley Creamer]

Hi Chris and everyone,


Thanks much for the feedback and quick lesson on how globals work in 
FMP11 with the Web. Last night I did a lot of searching/reading and 
learned more. Since I'm upgrading a FMP6 system to a FMP11 system, I 
expected to run into some walls... and some regret for upgrading.

  :-)

My wish would be that FMP11 allow a Web session user to permanently 
update the value of a global field if say... given special permissions, 
perhaps. This would then reflect the behavior of FMP6; in which this 
scenario worked fine. I'm very lucky in that the several scripts I 
employ that use global fields as scratch do actually work fine and I 
understand the "single-session life of a global" coupled with the change 
in FMP7+ being multi-threaded; users writing over each others scratch 
work would really mess things up.

I did deploy the whole "separate, single-record table" aptly named 
"Globals" to make up for the loss in the FMP6 expected global 
functionality. Nothing new... same method I've used in my SQL-based 
database solutions.

Again, thanks for your advice and help.

Bradley


*************************************************************************



Bradley (and all),

Sorry about the confusion.  I have this personality quirk where I 
explain some things TOO thoroughly and other times I miss details.  
*sigh*  FileMaker globals do work via FX.php (I'm using them in a 
project right now.)  At any rate, the folks here are correct, globals 
are session specific, and do not persist between FX.php connections.  
Here's how things work:

1) When using FileMaker Server, any global value which is set in one 
session is not available in anyone else's session, regardless of the 
client type.

2) In the cases where a value persists for a single user, it is because 
FileMaker is tracking login and logout, and one of your limited sessions 
will be consumed until the user does log out.  This is the case with 
FileMaker Pro, IWP, and XSLT using sessions.  There is no option to use 
FileMaker sessions with XML.

3) Even if FileMaker sessions could be used with XML CWP, my opinion is 
that PHP sessions would be superior because: (1) PHP is generally much 
faster than FileMaker; and (2) PHP has no 100 simultaneous sessions limit.

4) In the event that I need a value which is common to all sessions, I 
use a one record table (as I'm sure others here do as well.)

So, to ask the question that others here have, what are you trying to 
accomplish?  There's definitely a way to do what you need to do, though 
it may not be what you'd assume =)

Okay, now as to documentation, Gjermund has mentioned here that he has 
been putting some development versions of FX.php up on the sourceforge 
site for FX.php (yes, there is one, and it's been around almost as long 
as FX, though it hasn't been used much.)  I'll have a wiki of some sort 
going by Christmas, as well.  (Please hold me to this, folks =)  
Basically, I realize that at this point, we've come a long ways, and 
there are a number of you that could make really solid contributions 
both in terms of development and documentation.  Additionally, FileMaker 
Web development is more mainstream than it was when FX.php first 
appeared.  This list is awesome, but people need better documentation 
than what I've done, and it won't hurt to have someone checking my 
facts, too =)

Best,

--Chris