XML and FileMaker – Making it Work

PARSING XML documents looks daunting, but don;t let that scare you.  Once you get past the ugly look of XML and XSLT, it’s pretty straight forward.  And since thousands of programs and websites provide data streams in XML format, learning how to process XML into FileMaker is a handy tool to have in your toolbox.  David Nahodyl of Blue Feather shows how to make that transition:

FileMaker has a defined XML style of what “record data” looks like. It only knows how to import records as XML in this one particular style of XML formatting, called a Document Type Definition (DTD). This specific XML DTD which FileMaker understands is named FMPXMLRESULT. Any data that you want FileMaker to import must match the FMPXMLRESULT DTD, or else FileMaker can’t read it and won’t know what to do with the information. We can use XSL Transformations (XSLT) to convert (transform) non-FileMaker XML data into a FileMaker-friendly FMPXMLRESULT format.

FileMaker provides a description of the FMPXMLRESULT format at http://www.filemaker.com/help/html/import_export.16.30.html. This page describes which tags and attributes are required for FileMaker to successfully read an XML document in the FMPXMLRESULT format.

Let’s take a look at an example of FMPXMLRESULT-styled XML data. For this tutorial I’ve created a simple FileMaker weather database with one table with _kp_ID, City, Temperature, Humidity, Wind Speed, Wind Direction, and Clouds fields. I’ve exported these fields (other than the _kp_ID field) using FileMaker’s Export Records function to export the data as XML to get a sample for us to reference.

One more thing: For a great web programming reference, be sure to bookmark w3schools.com.  Easy to understand lessons, practice bots that let you experiment, and quizzes to test your performance, all at your own pace.

Importing XML data into FileMaker using XSLT (XSL Style Sheets) | Blue Feather – FileMaker Developer, Android, Web.

Liked Liked
Need FileMaker Development Help? Or to purchase FileMaker Software?
Contact FM Pro Gurus for help