web services plug-in for FileMaker
Exciting news:
The 3.5 version of the Web Services Plug-in is available now!
“Before the Web Services Plug-in, we were doing dual-entry by hand each day to coordinate paid bookings of our rooms. It was labor-intensive and wasteful. With the Web Services Plug-in, we can easily transfer data between our systems on demand, saving precious staff time and reducing errors.
We can’t thank you enough!"
~ Katy Butterworth
Faculty of Education
The University of Auckland
Connecting FileMaker to the Cloud
The Web Services Plug-in delivers a vast array of possibilities to FileMaker developers who want to integrate web services into their solutions. If you can write FileMaker calculations, then you can interact with web services.
Today’s customers demand rich and seamless connectivity with all the web has to offer. Creating a call center application and need to look up the city and state for a ZIP code? Need live information for a financial services product? The Web Services Plug-in will cut your development time to shreds.
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Web Services Plugin can connect to both Internet and enterprise web services, and can be used on a local FileMaker client, or installed on your FileMaker Server! |
How it works
The Web Services Plug-in reads any SOAP service’s WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file and exposes the web service methods as FileMaker functions, allowing you to easily integrate these functions directly into your FileMaker system.
The Web Services Plug-in also includes HTTP client functions for accessing REST APIs, often provided by large-scale web applications. These functions now allow you to retrieve, parse and store data from REST web service responses in your solutions, instead of using Web Viewers.
What’s new in version 3.5?
Web Services Plug-in now includes support for accessing RESTful APIs, enabling broader compatibility with an expanded range of popular web services, such as Twitter, Amazon S3 storage, Flickr, Zillow and many more.
Web Services Plug-in also includes built-in standards-based XML and (new in 3.5) JSON parsers for fast and reliable handling of service responses. Instead of guestimating with FileMaker’s text manipulation functions or laboriously building your own custom functions, your FileMaker project now has access to XPATH and JSON query engines for precision response parsing. The WSP XPATH and JSON query functions are also flexible enough to handle parsing of any XML and JSON data your solution has access to, not just web services responses.
Web Services Plug-in now also supports client certificate authentication for environments where it is required.
IMPORTANT: When registered, version 3.5 requires a 3.x license key. Do not install version 3.5 on a system registered with a version 1 or 2 license. If you call the registration function without the correct license key, the plug-in will not be fully functional. If you have previously purchased a version 1 or 2 license key, please contact us at at 1 (510) 835-4483 or info@beezwax.net to request an equivalent version 3.x license key for free.
What are Web Services?
Web services provide a standard way for one system to share data and make its functionality available to others. The Web Services Plug-in allows you to make useful and feature-rich FileMaker solutions by integrating dynamic third-party data. Examples include postal code lookups, address verifications, currency conversions, SMS text message sending, and stock quote lookups, and much more. In addition, enterprise products from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and others also support Web Services, allowing you to connect the FileMaker solutions in your organization to other internal or business partner systems.
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Weather is a very simple demo file which uses a free CDYNE web service. You can download a copy of the Weather demo from our wiki. |
What is a WSDL?
The Web Services Plug-in includes a parser for the Web Services Description Language, a standard XML-based format for describing SOAP web services. “WSDLs†are definitions of remote methods (functions) the service provide, necessary to access them. With the Web Services Plug-in, any service described by a WSDL can be accessed by your FileMaker application using ordinary FileMaker function calls automatically generated by the plug-in.
Sites that provide web service directories of many useful web services include XMethods, ProgammableWeb, and webserviceX.NET.
Subscription-based services from providers like CDYNE, StrikeIron, or Xignite.
Major web companies such as eBay, Amazon, PayPal and Google also provide REST or SOAP APIs to help application developers embed and extend their services.
Compatibility
Web Services Plug-in 3.5 is compatible with versions 9, 10, and 11 of FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server.
For Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server, version OSX 10.4 or later is required (note that FileMaker 11 requires version OSX 10.5 or later).
For Windows machines, Windows XP or later, or Windows Server 2003 or later is required.
You can order online or please call 510.835.4483 (toll free) or 510.835.4483.
Support
Technical support is available at .
If the idea of integrating web services into your solution is more than you want to take on, Beezwax can provide both consulting and implementation services to help you with your project. Please contact via email, or provide more information by filling out this form.