Interfacing FileMaker and Freeway Pro?

Freeway
1

I am the publisher of The Kansas Senior Times, a monthly newspaper
for active, older adults in Kansas. We deliver to over 700 locations
across Kansas by Post Office and also our own drivers. I have the
delivery information in a real simple FileMaker database.

I do have access to MySQL and PHP for my website, but don’t have a
clue about either one. I would love to be able to have someone come
to the website, type in the name of a town in a search field, and
then been shown the Name of the place, the address, and perhaps the
quantity of papers for all of the places we deliver to in that town.

What is the simplest way to do this, using Freeway Pro, of course?

Joe

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

2

Hi Joe,

If this was me I would create a dynamic site using Freeway, PHP
scripts and a MySQL database back end.

I would have an admin area where I could login then add locations of
outlets or delete and edit them as needed, you could also add the
number of publications each outlet distributes every month… although
that might take you some time if you have 700 outlets to update every
month unless switched to using the online MySQL database for adding
the delivery information to or you put it all together with Filemaker
and took advantage of the FM database.

In reality what you need is not very complicated for someone who works
with PHP MySQL but to do this yourself would mean a fairly steep
learning curve, although one that will give you a lot of satisfaction.
If you wanted to learn more on learning PHP and MySQL there is a great
book called: PHP and MySQL Web Development, ISBN 0-672-32525-X

I have some examples of using PHP and MySQL with Freeway here:
http://www.easibase.com/freeway/phpmysql.php

Now a few years ago there was some information and actions for using
Freeway with Filemaker, in fact someone was asking questions about the
same not too long ago so maybe do a search and see what they turned up
as I can’t remember what the outcome of the thread was. One of the
advantages of using PHP and MySQL over Filemaker id the cost of
running things, using PHP with a MySQL database doesn’t cost you
anything while Filemaker hosting is fairly expensive as far as I can
remember.

HTH

Mike

On Sep 3, 2008, at 9:01 PM, Joe Sporleder wrote:

I am the publisher of The Kansas Senior Times, a monthly newspaper
for active, older adults in Kansas. We deliver to over 700 locations
across Kansas by Post Office and also our own drivers. I have the
delivery information in a real simple FileMaker database.

I do have access to MySQL and PHP for my website, but don’t have a
clue about either one. I would love to be able to have someone come
to the website, type in the name of a town in a search field, and
then been shown the Name of the place, the address, and perhaps the
quantity of papers for all of the places we deliver to in that town.

What is the simplest way to do this, using Freeway Pro, of course?

Joe

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

3

You could export from your Filemaker database to a comma delimited format that you could import into MYSQL. There is also this app http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/204144 that claims to convert to multiple databases, although i’ve never used it.

Take a look at http://www.Hotscripts.com and search in the PHP section for scripts that do what you are interested in.

Keep in mind this has nothing to do with Freeway other than placing the code within the confines of a Freeway layout. What you are looking at is not for beginers neccessarily.

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

4

On Sep 3, 2008, at 3:01 PM, Joe Sporleder wrote:

I do have access to MySQL and PHP for my website, but don’t have a
clue about either one. I would love to be able to have someone come
to the website, type in the name of a town in a search field, and
then been shown the Name of the place, the address, and perhaps the
quantity of papers for all of the places we deliver to in that town.

Well, Freeway could easily lay out the results page for you, which
you would use as a template to be populated by your server with the
results of the search request. The larger issue will be getting the
FMP data into MySQL in a format that is optimized for the kind of
search you wish to do.

I have worked on several large FMP - MySQL integration projects, most
notably the Good Service Guide http://goodserviceguide.com. Despite
all the many advances made by Filemaker over the years with respect
to inter-relating with SQL databases, what works well on FMP is less
likely to match up to what works well on a Web-tuned MySQL database.
So the bulk of the work ends up being making a bridge between the two
systems.

As far as finding the boxes by town name or other identifier, that’s
pretty simple. Analogous, but not entirely the same idea: <http://
pluto.walterdavisstudio.com/zip> Enter a US ZIP Code and watch the
fun…

If you haven’t used a programming environment before, then I doubt
this would be a good place to start. But if you have a budget for
building this system, we should talk, or you should put it out here
for bids!

Walter

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

5

Do you want to keep up the FM database and reflect that on the web? If so, then you’d need a hose that supports FMP hosting.

It is probably easier to export the contents of the FM database and occasionally update it on the web, then do what chuckamuck describes.

However, there are methods to host a FM database on a server, and use PHP to show the data on your web site. FM hosting can be pretty pricey though. If you need some leads on hosts, I know some and you can contact me offline directly for those.

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options