#FILEMAKER BASEELEMENTS PORTABLE#

It has been possible to use cURL in versions of FileMaker prior to 16 with the help of plugins like MBS and BaseElements, and you may still need to look to these plugins in 16 for advanced use cases requiring options that aren’t supported natively. FileMaker 16 gets rid of the somewhat unconventional httppost/httpspost protocol that exists in earlier versions and now supports http, https, ftp, ftps, and file protocols. cURL provides everything you need to configure requests of almost all imaginable types.įileMaker 16 supports only a fraction of the protocols and options included with cURL. Additionally, when scripting in FileMaker, you won’t have a browser to elegantly handle 500 Internal Server or other errors, doing so will be your responsibility. For example, many APIs require custom headers to be sent such as API key(s), language preference, or content type. In fact as you start to interact with a variety of web services in FileMaker scripts, doing so becomes a necessity. Now as programmer you can see that a lot more can be gained by understanding and exploiting components of HTTP requests above and beyond just the URL itself. When you’re simply typing a URL into a web browser, the browser handles everything else for you behind the scenes.

Browser receives response, renders bodyĪs you can see, there’s actually a lot going on even with a basic webpage (HTTP) request.

URL is resolved to an IP address using Domain Name System.

In other words, what happens when you type a URL into a web browser? What happens when you type a URL into a web browser? In order to appreciate the new cURL support in FileMaker, it is important to understand a little bit about the anatomy of a HTTP request. Enhanced cURL options in FileMaker make it much easier for FileMaker solutions to interact with other systems, opening doors for what is possible within FileMaker. cURL is the most popular file transfer library on the planet–it is used by billions of devices every day. The project name is conveniently/appropriately pronounced “see URL” while the command line utility name is pronounced just like the sport. Practically speaking, cURL is a swiss army knife of tools used by programmers to exchange information between systems using dozens of supported protocols. cURL stands for “Client for URLs” or “Client for URL Request Library” and it includes the URL spelled in uppercase to emphasize it deals with URLs.

#FILEMAKER BASEELEMENTS PORTABLE#

We’re talking about cURL the free and open source project consisting of two products, a command line utility called curl and a portable library called libcurl, designed for transferring data with URLs. And no, we’re not talking about curling the sport, though it is very popular here in Minnesota and we recommend you try it too if you never have.

Photo: Jon Oropeza – Wikimedia CommonsĪt LuminFire, we’re very excited about enhanced support for cURL added in FileMaker 16.

Team USA curling at the Vancouver Olympics.

Filemaker baseelements