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For the last week or so I’ve had the opportunity to do some development with FileMaker Go for the iPhone. As a new product, FileMaker Go shows lots of promise and room for growth. There are lots of really cool features, not the least of which is simply being able to take your data with you or access it on a server from outside the home or office. (Update: there has already been a new release of updates for FileMaker Go — check them out here)
One awesome discovery, found recently by fellow developer Beatrice Beaubien, is the use of QR codes to trigger access to a hosted FileMaker file. QR codes, short for Quick Response, are becoming commonplace as a way to have your mobile device interact with printed or displayed media. A QR code can encode data such as calendar events, contact info, email addresses, geo location, sms, text, phone numbers or a URL. There are plenty of free QR readers/scanners in Apple’s App Store to read the codes, and there are plenty of free websites you can use to create your own codes.
The ability of these codes to store a URL is where we can make this work with FileMaker Go. All forms of FileMaker client applications, including FileMaker Go, can open a hosted file using a special URL: fmp7://hostname.com/filename.fp7
By encoding the path to one of my hosted files (in this case, the Sample Inventory file that FileMaker Inc. distributed with FileMaker Go), using the QR Code Generator at http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ I was able to produce this image:
Using the free app, QR Code Reader and Scanner, I can view this image using the camera on my iPhone which recognizes it immediately and launches FileMaker Go, opening the hosted file.
Where can you see this technology being used? Does it give you an idea for simplifying access to your hosted files? Download an app and give it a try!
6 Comments
Interested to hear of any school-related uses that people come up with QR codes.
Hi Steve,
For some reason I can’t get the QR Reader you recommended to launch FM Go. Red Laser worked for me. Thanks for the post.
If you want to generate QR Codes directly in FileMaker, I created a solution to do this. The file can be found on my blog: http://fmprodb.com/197/creating-qr-codes-with-filemaker.html
Thanks, Matt
Hey Matt,
Thanks for pointing that out. There must have been an update that killed that QR Reader. I confirmed that it doesn’t work for me now either. I had sent them a message asking them to fix their URL handler so it could support fmp7:// with a user name and password. The way it had been working was it would see the @ character and think it was an email address.
hi, is it possible to trigger a specific record within a filemaker go file?
i.e. i genrate QR codes for products, the user scans the code and the correct record is shown.
cheers
joerg-mark
Thanks for your comment Jörg-Mark. Sorry to take so long replying.
Using the fmp7Script URL protocol it is possible to specify a script and even pass a script parameter so technically it is possible to go to a specific record. You could encode the QR Code with the ID of the record by including it as the script parameter or a script variable. Here’s a sample of what this protocol looks like:
FMP7Script://hostname.com/filename.fp7?script=ScriptName¶m=ScriptParam&$var=variable
In this example, the host is defined as “hostname.com”, the file is “filename.fp7″, the script name is “ScriptName”, the script parameter is “ScriptParam” and a script variable is defined as “var” with the value “variable”.
A couple of things to note though. This will only work with FM Go 1.x / 11.x (there is probably a similar protocol for FM Go 12). I believe the file, if hosted, must be hosted with FileMaker Pro/Server 11.
Another problem may be the scanning software you use. The software I mentioned in the article may not work since it apparently doesn’t use protocols defined by apps on your iOS device but rather hard-codes them in its app.
You can find more information about the FMP7Script protocol in this FMI KB article:
http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7786/