Crain Industries ~est. 1981~

FileMaker Content Management System Part I

One of my greatest joys of this past week was finding out that I will be able to use a FileMaker PHP API to put together a pretty slick content management system. I’d like to gather some resources and experiences in this post and hopefully show the way a little easier for someone who may want to follow.

A little background. The School of Music (this is where I work) is entrenched in FileMaker databases, from handling lockers and keys, to scheduling rooms, keeping track of student records, handling CD duplication and everything in between. Over the past couple of years I was thrown head first into learning how to use FileMaker and develop some hefty solutions and applications including a album/royalty tracking database and a huge application for handling the front end user interface of a 30 year archive of music from the Wheatland Music Festival.

Over the years I’ve come to realize how much I enjoy database and especially user interface design. I don’t fully understand the tools especially the web specified ones like PHP, but I’m learning and it’s something I enjoy. But I do enjoy FileMaker, and it looks like I will be able to bridge the knowledge gap using FileMaker logic to teach myself a little PHP. I came across the entire CMS idea almost by accident. I developed a simple FileMaker database and wanted a simple way for students to login to it via AD and have access to one simple locked down page based on their login. Simple enough. A few little FM scripts and with IWP I’m up and running. In the back of my head, I’m thinking there’s got to be a more customizable thing than this so I could do a little better/cleaner UI than what IWP gives you. It’s not that I hadn’t known about customizable web publishing using XML or PHP, it’s just that I never put 2 and 2 together and realized the possibilities for our department. I also underestimated the ease of use for something like this. It’s got a learning curve that’s for sure, but it’s been done before and there are some resources available.

One of the main things I came to which told me this can and has been done before was this recording from Kevin Nathanson, Product Manager, FileMaker Server products and Web Technologies, FileMaker, Inc., Eric Jacobson, Web Technologies Architect, FileMaker, Inc., and Lance Hallberg, Principal Owner, FM Synergy. This one is will worth your time if you’re interested.

FileMaker and PHP

The FM Synergy site contains downloads to the FM files utilized in this demo, but they are actually from a DevCon conference that Lance did a few years back, so you don’t get the exact talk through he gave there. But poke around the files and you should be able to figure everything out. (Also has some cool AJAX tips on his site too.) Oh and one thing that tripped me up for awhile…make sure you are using the current filemaker.php file not the one included with this download, otherwise you will be getting an error and your pages won’t load.

VTC has a few basic tutorials to work through (and more if you pay, I never did…).

Jonathan Stark has also done a ton with the FileMaker PHP API including literally writing the book.

Another great book is FileMaker Web Publishing: A Complete Guide to Using the API for PHP. This book was written by three great FileMaker developers and would make a great resource. It goes a little more in depth with examples and things you can do with PHP than the Jonathan Stark book, but both are great resources.

This is really just the groundwork for getting started with FileMaker and PHP. Hopefully I will be able to make this more of a series as I tackle this puzzle from the ground up.