FileMaker: integrating with Magento - php

Question

I would like to write a Magento web-app working with Filemaker database.
Could I overwrite the database core files with code using filemaker php api?
What other options are there?

Answer 1

I wanted to do an interface between Filemaker and Magento database but cause of the EAV it's a nightmare to bind the Magento database with a filemaker database. If you want to do that you really need to use PHP in Filemaker and use the SOAP API of Magento if they are separated hosted.
You could too integrate the Magento core API into a PHP script with Filemaker API too if you host your Magento on the same web server or by installing a new Magento instance pointing to an availalble external database. You could do a local replication of the mysql database too on the Filemaker server.
To integrate Magento Core APi it's easy in a PHP file, you set the following:
<?php
require_once 'yourmagentoinstallation/path/app/Mage.php';
Mage::app('default'); // default can be replaced by your default store code
// You can use Magento code (model, EAV, singleton, block, etc)
...
?>
It's possible, there are different ways but I didn't find when I needed an out of the box solution.

Answer 2

It depends on what you mean by "integrate". I doubt you'll need to do something in the lines of "overwrite database core files". Most likely you'll need to update FileMaker when an order is placed and do the same thing to Magento when they get a stock update. It's quite likely that these two scenarios would have to be implemented in vastly different manner.
Here's what FileMaker can do. Its XML backend can readily accept GET and POST requests to the server. Their syntax is fairly advanced and you can find records, add, delete, and duplicate them, run FileMaker scripts, etc. It's nowhere near SQL, especially searching, but quite logical. The server responds in XML. Here's the manual (PDF).
The server can also accepts arbitrary requests sent to its PHP API. (It also has a XSLT API, but it's deprecated and is going to be removed.) The API then reshapes the request as it pleases, talks with the XML backend, and returns back the result. As I'm not a PHP expert, I'm not quite sure where the API is explained, but it must be somewhere here.
FileMaker itself (i.e. its desktop client or even the server) can use plug-ins to talk to web services. E.g. as the stock updates the desktop client can prepare and send requests to Magento API.
And FileMaker can access certain 'big' SQL databases directly. E.g. it can connect to a MySQL database and work with its tables very much like with its own. Maybe it would be unwise to allow free work with core Magento tables, but a carefully scripted updates look like a viable option.
The plug-in and direct connection are better left to FileMaker developers, while the XML and PHP (XSLT) APIs are pretty standard web stuff.

Answer 3

Productive Computing has done some work with Magento. It sounds like they are using external datasources to connect which would make for an overly excessive integration.
Productive Computing Blog
Our NRGship products use the Magento PHP API to pull order data and update order status post-shipment. In order to mirror this, you would need some PHP code server-side, and then use a plugin like Troi URL to invoke http requests to query and update record status.
Providing more information on your needs would allow for a more detailed response.

Answer 4

I use the JDBC driver that comes with Filemaker Pro and I have built a server app in Java that connects to filemaker through JDBC to auto insert data such as orders etc and have background tasks automate updates such as product updates and order status updates by getting data from filemaker through JDBC. The java server app then sends SOAP API requests off to Magento to handle the data exchange.
We have extended this further by having the server app listen for XML messages/commands on a socket so I can have real time integration to filemaker where needed. I then have a simple filemaker plugin I wrote using 24U Filemaker Plugin Template that sends small XML messages to the java server application which then issues an API call to magento accordingly. Filemaker waits for the server app response which gets returned and then filemaker continues the rest of the script that called the method.
It's a lot more elaborate than this in the sense it has a queue of tasks to perform so not to overload magento API, and we have a DB connection pool for the filemaker JDBC connections to save the overload of opening and closing connections. This works really really well, and we literally have the entirety of Magento integrated with filemaker and have produced many custom API modules for magento to achieve additional functionality which magento does not provide.
I was reading it's possible to create Java Plugins for java so in theory you could do away with the server app and simply create a filemaker plugin which has the magento API function calls built into it. If using V2 WSI Compliance mode for magento soap calls you could generate all the stub classes and methods using the JAXB web services plugin which is part of Netbeans which will save you days and days of work.