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April 15, 2002
Outputing a Filemaker DB in XML
This URL lets me get at a Filemaker DB and output it in XML:
http://127.0.0.1:8100/simple/fmpro?-db=books.fp5&-format=-dso_xml&-max=5&-find=&
Returns:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><ERRORCODE>0</ERRORCODE><DATABASE>books.fp5</DATABASE><LAYOUT /><title>Physics of Baseball</title><isbn>0-155-2558-225</isbn><comment>This is a good book</comment></ROW><title>XTML: The best</title><isbn>05-88554-48525-255</isbn><comment>This is also very good</comment></ROW><title>The Stand</title><isbn>78-4185-11</isbn><comment>My books</comment></ROW></FMPDSORESULT>
So I can use Filemaker to maintain my list of books, query it to get an XML file, and then use XSL or something else to format up a nice looking page than I can drop in this weblog. I could also drop the XML itself into the Radio WWW directory and have it stream up to the server, for whatever that's worth.
And if there was a real DTD that I want to stay current with, I guess I could also use XSL to convert my Filemaker XML to that form.
It all sounds great, but it means I have some work to do; I'm only familar with most of these technologies by name alone.