Drupal 7 Port of FileMaker module

There is now a planned release date for the D7 version of the module. Please see:

https://drupal.org/node/1136710#comment-6157932

I would like to have this in D7 as I just started a project.
Unfortunately I am lack of skill and knowledge in PHP.

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I am thinking of using the FX.php API instead of the official FileMaker API in the Drupal 7 port for the following reasons:

Advantages of switching to FX.php

1. GPL
2. Better performance*
3. Open source, which allows me (us) to fix bugs

Disadvantages of switching to FX.php

1. Drupal 7 port will take longer because current code uses the FileMaker API

* http://jonathanstark.com/fm/web-publishing-with-filemaker-and-php.php

Am I missing any advantages or disadvantages? Other people's thoughts?

I am interested in the drupal7 version as well, as our institute plans a website for a project where filemaker content should be displayed - are there any news on the development or release date?

Probably January, absent a client hiring me to port it sooner.

Would be happy to help with testing. Feel free to contact me.

I would love this on Drupal 7 too.

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Any news on that Drupal 7 version?

My organization would definitely be interested in the Drupal 7 port.

We have a large Filemaker database for our internal use, but we would like to make the database searchable, and potentially also updatable, by our customers via our Drupal 7 website.

Any update on when the Drupal 7 port might be available?

Im also interested in using a drupal 7 version of this module!

Great news: D7 port is underway and will include new features.

Will u support FileMaker pro 12? The latest version.

I'm also really interested in a D7 port of this module!

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Connie: FileMaker 12 is faster with my software than previous versions of FileMaker are. The software supports anything FM Sever v7 and above, but 12 is the fastest.

There is now a date for the D7 version of the FileMaker module.

The D7 version will be released at FileMaker DevCon, and we will be renting a booth there. If any of you are going, please stop by the Inner File Software booth for a demo and to say hello. We will be selling hosted pre-configured FileMaker websites, and would also be happy to answer any questions you might have.

For those not attending DevCon, I will upload the D7 version to Drupal.org for you to download sometime during the conference, or shortly after. The conference is July 16th through the 19th.

Ted, thanks indeed. We are already on FileMaker 12 and FileMaker Go 12.

Hope the DevCon went well. What's the latest? Thanks!

I've been working with Ted on this and we've been making great progress but we're switching the module to OOP and it's taking a little longer than expected. We hope to have it ready for testing within just a few weeks...we'll post an update (here, on this issue) as soon as we have an RC.

Thanks for the update. Expect to help with the testing. :)

Can't wait to test it.

The module will connect two major technologies for our company:
FileMaker Pro & D7

Any news on the development of the D7 version?

Mabye I'm to late but the new FileMaker 12 PHP API is way more faster than the FM11 version. FileMaker claims it is more than 100 times faster. Having used it in two projects I'm must say there is a good performance increase.
Only the license is still the same.

Just renaming for easier tracking in dashboard

I hear everyone. Sorry. I hope to get back to this soon.

About half way there, and I have a lot of lessons learned.

Changes for the D7 model:

1) The module will support either FX.php or the FileMaker API for PHP.
2) The module will attach to any node. There will no longer be a concept of a "FileMaker" node.
3) The module will store data in both FileMaker and Drupal.
4) Views will work with the data, since it is stored in both FileMaker and Drupal.
5) The site will be as fast as any other Drupal site because a copy of the data is stored in Drupal.
6) Normal permissions will work since the FileMaker Interface is the node interface.
7) The code is now object oriented.
8) The module will have hooks.

Again, D7 version is about halfway done. I am about to post the code as it is, if anyone wants to check it out. Give me a month or so before it is released.

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any update for D7 release?

Hey guys,

I've been following this topic for a while and thought I would chime in with an alternative method to connect Filemaker to Drupal.

Working with a Filemaker guru of sorts we used an ODBC Filemaker plugin (available from Actual Technologies) and mapped it to our MySQL database directly so that Filemaker would be a bit like a rich user interface with access to the fields we want it to have access to.

We used Drupal 7 with civiCRM 4.2.x and mapped contact and membership fields through the ODBC plugin to Filemaker which allows us to access and run reports on anything we need to.

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi tedstein,

Wondering if you've made any progress towards a release of the D7 version? I took a look at the code in git so far and with a few fixes was able to at least get connections saving to the database. Not sure where to go from there unfortunately.

I'd be willing to help out with the development as I need this for a client project.

Is there any public 7.x repo which we can test and give feedback to?
Opening a 7.x -dev branch on d.o would enable people to start filing issues giving feedback and patches to help fast track the module.

Doh. My bad. I just checked before and there was no 7.x branch. After double checking, I've found it in the master branch.
I would recommend to delete master branch and open a 7.x branch to let d.o generate a -dev tarball. This would make WIP more visible an would let more people test it without them having to dig in the repo viewer to find the D7 version buried inside master branch.

Choosing FX.php over FileMaker's ODBC connection has many pro's (and some con's).

1. is speed, the ODBC connection is generaly very very slow.
2. Deminising of functions that can be performed on ODBC tables.

A con however is that FM users have to understand drupal better.

The prospect of using views on FileMaker Pro data sound very exiting to me.

I hope you mean FileMaker's built-in PHP API, not FX.php, which was deprecated like ten years ago.

@sjiuh: I'm not sure if you're responding to my earlier post but if so I have found that using FMP as the front end and connecting to the database with ODBC is many times faster than working through a web interface. It's not as fast as working with a local FMP database but much faster than the typical load, change, reload process that goes on in a web browser; more like AJAX.

I do agree with you that in order to use ODBC with Drupal, FMP users need to know FMP as well as Drupal's database structure quite well. It's definitely something for developer types and isn't a plug-n-play type solution.

It's not always feasible to install ODBC drivers for FileMaker on your Drupal host.

Here's another way to connect to a FileMaker database, by the way:
http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/featured-recipe-filemaker-and-drupal

@Shawn: You wouldn't be installing anything on your Drupal server. You use an ODBC plugin in FMP and give it the credentials to connect to your Drupal database. Then you create a relationship between your FMP fields and the fields that you want to relate to. In Drupal I would expect that this would be your profile fields.

In our case we're using civiCRM with a Drupal front-end to manage a membership and we've connected FMP right to the contact and membership record fields on the civiCRM database. It's quite flexible but as sjiuh, mentioned this isn't for the casual user, this requires a good idea of what fields you want to affect.

I just mentioned this in case someone else needed a solution while this one is in limbo.

Andrew

Oh, I see. You're accessing your Drupal database from the FileMaker database, not the other way around.

You lose access to the Drupal API, though. Creating nodes directly from the database is, in general, a Bad Idea (tm). But, I suppose, you could just push the FileMaker data into extra MySQL tables in your Drupal database, and then use Drupal to manipulate/import it.

hi all,
In the interim of waiting for this module's D7 port, I would be grateful for a quick example of how to simply access a FM database via ODBC/PHP (PDO?). I've succeeded, using a DSN with the FM ODBC driver on my local Windows machine. But I'll need to know what the syntax would be when I do it on the Linux machine where things will end up.I've been trying without luck.

This worked on local windows machine (use xampp server setup):
$conn=odbc_connect("title_of_dsn", "db_user","db_pw");

I'll need something like this on the Linux server? (with the real IP #):
$conn=odbc_connect("Driver={which_driver??};Server=00.00.000.000;Database=db_name;","db_user","db_pw");

I'm wondering what to fill in for "driver" for FM. I understand there's some sort of 'generic' option?

thanks!

Yeah, that's right Shawn. You connect directly to the database from FMP and can push data into Drupal or Pull it into FMP or a combination of the two. It's not a simple enable a module and run solution. It requires planning and a knowledge of how the database works but there should be no reason for intermediate tables and an import; all the data is in the database so it doesn't matter how it gets there as long as it's inserted correctly (Drupal does have a complicated set of tables).

As I mentioned our use case is different from yours because we're using civiCRM with Drupal and we have a separate database for contact records. civiCRM is tightly integrated to Drupal and user accounts are directly related to their civiCRM contact record counterparts. That said, you should be able to do the same thing we've done by installing the ODBC extension in Filemaker and then using the data relation GUI to create relationships so that Filemaker either pulls the data from Drupal or pushes changes back.

* Regarding the topic of data, as far as I know, Filemaker Pro is about Contacts or as Drupal calls them Users. I don't imagine that you aren't using it to create Nodes but if you are, may I suggest rethinking your approach? For me, Drupal's user management is what sets it apart from other CMS solutions and it allows me to create any number of contact types which can be listed out (via Views perhaps) into any type of searchable directory or listing that you might need.

@rogernyc: How are you making your connection? Are you using the ODBC plugin I mentioned earlier or are you coding up something yourself?

@awasson - I'm coding up something myself. For now, I only need to read data from a FM database remotely via PHP/MySql on a Linux host.

@rogernyc: Sorry I can't help with that but I wonder if it is available in part of the existing module code.

Andrew

@awasson: Yeah, I hear ya. I've looked inside of various modules, and will continue to do so. Sad thing is that it seems that I pretty much only need one bit - the FM ('generic'?) driver syntax/name for odbc_connect() - and it's been tough to find an answer to this.

thanks.

Hi. Sorry.

D7 FileMaker is back in progress. We are working on github now, but will bring it here as soon as we have a working version (hopefully next week).

For those interested: https://github.com/tedstein/fmd7

Awesome!

Update: We have over half of this completed. Maybe another 2 or 3 weeks until a release candidate.

If you want to follow the progress:

https://github.com/tedstein/fmd7/commits/master

Subscribing.

To keep everyone up to date:

I have been working with Robert Fox on this, and we now have Drupal and FileMaker create/find/update/delete working.

I am not the best at making time estimates, but we might have a release candidate next week!

Thanks for the update @tedstein. :-)

And we have a release candidate for the Drupal 7 version of the FileMaker module!