FileMaker

Introduction I had been planning for a while to dive deeper into the fmp12 file format to explore how data is organized and how accounts and passwords are stored. A few months ago, I finally found the time to do it. The first thing I noticed was just how little information publicly exists about the file format and especially about account and password storage. The only information on the latter was that “a one-way hash” is used for storing passwords and that there are some password reset tools that – according to forums – might work but would also “damage” your file, without any further clarification. ...

A description of how FileMaker Server stores secrets and how to approach deciphering an unknown keystore.

Back in the dark ages the FileMaker Server admin console (then Java Web Start) allowed you to remotely upload new fmp12 files to the server. For some reason this feature did not survive the admin console rewrite a decade (?) ago. Rather, the upload feature was integrated into the Pro client. Later, as the Admin REST API was released, the upload feature was still missing. The only two options to upload fmp12 files to the server are thus: ...

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. ...