Re: Filemaker Pro & Perl

Filemaker Pro will export to a tab or comma delimited format, html table files, as well as: SYLK .DBF .DIF .wk1 (lotus 123) .bas (BASIC files) .mer (merge files)

It can also be set up to run as a web server. If your client is off-site you could perhaps be gathering info updates without having them send you exports, by issuing http requests to their system and extracting info from the replies.

If you want to go uberschnappen then you can learn CDML & create custom templates designed to be hit by your code that would be more efficient than using their GUI tools to build pages.

BUT, with regards to simply parsing the file format, no, it doesn't exist, yet. You've now given me a project, since I'm very familiar with FMPro, I guess I'm elected. Stay Tuned...

Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!

Comment on Re: Filemaker Pro & Perl

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What an ugly format by gregor42 (Parson) on Jun 19, 2001 at 18:39 UTC
OK after taking a long look at the file format, I see that it's basically a binary format with ASCII values embedded. There's a lot of information in there that you also don't care about, for example, layout names, GUI info, creation date info fot he DB file itself, printer drivers, & what looks like serial number hashes as author stamps. (Not a listed feature mind you.) The binary info doesn't line up to a consistent ASCII representation for a delimiter string, so though you can grep through & find the info, that won't help you parse it worth a damn. What I DID think of however, was that an access mechanism could be written somewhat trivially using an AppleScript/PERL hybrid. Naturally this would only work under Mac OS, so odds are that doesn't help. But it does give me an easier way to solve this problem. Unfortunately I have no macs @ work. ); So It'll have to wait until I get home tonight. Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!	[reply]
Re: Re: Filemaker Pro & Perl by gregor42 (Parson) on Jun 19, 2001 at 18:56 UTC
Upon looking in Super Search for Filemaker I found a reference to this: Mac::Glue which also looks very promising. But again, only if you're on the Macintosh platform, since it relies heavily on Apple Events, which is a Mac OS feature. Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!	[reply]