FileMaker

In this tutorial I want to describe how you can setup immediate notifications whenever your scheduled FileMaker scripts stop running – for example due to a crashed FileMaker scripting engine, an error in your script or just general server downtime. I will be using allgood.systems, a monitoring platform I recently built. Creating a new Job Monitor Once you have registered on allgood.systems you can navigate to the “Job Monitors” tab to create a new monitor for the FileMaker script you would like to get notifications for. ...

When debugging code that integrates with the Claris FileMaker Data API, it is sometimes helpful to trace a request from your app all the way to the code of the Data API. You might be getting an unexpected error response, want to see what data actually arrives on the server, how a wrapper library, if you use any, might translate the request/response, etc. Doing this kind of troubleshooting is much easier when you are able to directly attach a debugger to the remote process. This blog post describes a few steps you can take to remotely debug Data API requests. ...

A couple of months ago I looked more deeply into the “Import Records” functionality in FileMaker, especially the XML parsing, and was wondering if any XXE vulnerability may exist and how one could exploit this in technically interesting ways. The vulnerability is/was indeed there and can lead to local file disclosure and server side request forgery in various components of the FileMaker platform. The following is a description of the vulnerability including potential exploitation paths. ...

Have you ever gotten the following error after trying to encrypt your FileMaker databases? Due to an error encountered, File encryption/decryption was skipped. File:my_file.fmp12 [853] Error 853 refers to One or more containers failed to transfer in the error code listing and herein usually lies the problem. When you encrypt your database, make sure to place the existing external container data into the same folder as the database you want to encrypt. It is not enough to copy the RC_Data_FMS directory straight from the server. You need to have the external container data in a folder called Files. ...

A few hours ago FileMaker 17 was released, and with it an updated Data API, which is now finally out of trial phase. Depending on your situation and if you have used the Data API in v16, there’s good and bad news. The bad news is that all API paths have been renamed, response formats have changed, authentication works a little different, and a few other little changes here and there. The good news is: if you have been using my python-fmrest wrapper library, little to no adjustments are necessary to make your existing app compatible with FileMaker 17 😎. If you have not used the library but have an app that you need to update, you might still be interested in reading a bit further to get a summary of the changes. ...