Revision as of 20:08, 22 July 2013

360Works RemoteScripter User Guide

RemoteScripter allows you to remotely trigger FileMaker scripts on another computer. It can be triggered either by RemoteScripter running on a different computer, or by an HTTP URL. This plugin can safely be triggered from within the Web Publishing Engine, which makes it an ideal way to trigger non-web-safe scripts on a separate script processing computer. For example, let's say that your Instant Web Publishing (IWP) application needs to be able to generate downloadable PDF's. You would define a script called "Generate PDF" which is designed to be run on a computer running regular FileMaker Pro at IP address 10.0.0.25. It might looking something like this:</p>

Enter find mode
Set field Customer::customer ID to Get(ScriptParameter)
Perform find
Save as PDF
RemoteScripterSetResult("Success")

Now pick a random port number to run RemoteScripter on. We'll pick 4546, but it can be anything that does not conflict with another service running on the same port. You would have a startup script which calls:</p>

RemoteScripterStart(4546, Get(FileName), "Generate PDF")

This tells RemoteScripter to trigger the Generate PDF script if it receives any requests on port 4546.</p> On the computer running IWP, you would have a button that the user clicks on to see the PDF. This button triggers a script which would look something like this:</p>

if( RemoteScripterTrigger("10.0.0.25", 4645, Customer::customer ID) = "Success" )
	Go to Layout (Download PDF)
else
	Go to Layout (Show PDF generation error)
end if

You could also trigger the PDF generation script directly from a user's browser, without going through the IWP web server. Just have a URL that looks like this:</p>

<a href="10.0.0.25:4645?35">View customer record 35</a>

This will trigger RemoteScripter to run the script and return whatever is set with RemoteScripterSetResult().</p>

You can use RemoteScripter to trigger scripts on your clients machines when they click links in a web viewer in your filemaker database. This allows you to design an interface in HTML, Java, Flash, or any language which can be displayed in your web viewer and then still trigger filemaker scripting. You can accomplish this by installing the Remote Scripter plugin on each of your client machines. You can then call the RemoteScripterStart function like in the example above (a startup script is a good place for this) and trigger the script using a link in your HTML to http://localhost:4645. The "localhost" url always points to the machine accessing it, so your users will trigger your script on their own machines when they click the link!</p>

360Works Plugin Setup Guides

See Plugins_101 for Error reporting, installation, registration, and more.

Function Summary

Function Detail

RemoteScripterBringFilemakerToFront

You may optionally call this function to bring Filemaker to the front and give it focus.

RemoteScripterGetVersion

Returns the version number of the RemoteScripter plugin.

RemoteScripterLastError

Returns detailed information about the last error generated by this plugin. If another plugin function returns the text "ERROR", call this function to get a user-presentable description of what went wrong.

RemoteScripterLicenseInfo

RemoteScripterRegister ( licenseKey; companyName )

Registers the plugin.

RemoteScripterSetErrorCapture ( errorCapture )

RemoteScripterSetResponseHeaders ( header1 = value1 {; header2 = value2 ; ... )

Allows the user to set the response headers and value pairs for a script by defining them in a string array.

RemoteScripterSetResponseHTTPcode ( HTTPcode )

Allows the user to set the response HTTP code for a script by defining them in an integer.

RemoteScripterSetResult ( resultText )

You may optionally call this function with text to return as the result of triggered script. If you do not call it, it will return nothing. This is usually called near the end of the triggered script.

RemoteScripterStart ( portNumber; filename; scriptname { key1=value1 ; key2=value2 ; ... } )

Starts FileMaker listening on the specified port. When it gets any request on that port, it will trigger the script. If there are any parameters included in the HTTP request, it will pass these along as script parameters to FileMaker.

The following starts RemoteScripter listening on port 9876. Incoming requests will trigger the Remote Scripter Callback Script script, passing in form values as key=value pairs, with the keys containing a $foo_ prefix.

RemoteScripterStart( 9876; Get(FileName); "Remote Scripter Callback Script" ; "variablePrefix=$foo_")

Handling form data in FileMaker

If the RemoteScripter URL contains key=value data pairs, RemoteScripter will convert the values to the format $key1="value1";$key2="value2". This makes it easy to pass the resulting string to the evaluate and let functions in FileMaker, which will populate local variables with the values from the form.

For example, an HTML form with inputs for firstName, lastName, and notes will result in the following script parameter being passed in from RemoteScripter:

$notes="testing¶one¶two¶three";$firstName="Sam";$lastName="Barnum"

To convert this to actual variables in FileMaker, use the following functions:

Evaluate ( "Let ( [" & Get(ScriptParameter) & "] ; true )" )

After calling this, you'll have local variables for $firstName, $lastName, and $notes.

Optional parameters

variablePrefix

The symbol to use before a variable name, default is "$", to facilitate the use of Let and Evaluate. For backwards compatibility with older versions of RemoteScripter (1.6 and earlier), pass an empty string for the variablePrefix. To prevent form values from conflicting with predefined variables, use a unique prefix for the variable name.

RemoteScripterStop ( portNumber )

Stops listening on this port.

RemoteScripterTrigger ( remoteAddress; portNumber {; parameterText ; timeout } )

Triggers a script on the remote computer running the RemoteScripter plugin. This waits until the remote computer finishes the script, and returns the result.