Read filemaker export in php

Question

I have a problem reading an exported file from FileMaker Pro and read/load it in PHP.

I'm using Codeigniter, but I can use pure/plain Php 5

I tried exporting in csv but having difficulties reading it, than I tried in xml, but the export is about 500MB size (...) and is difficult to loop thru the nodes.

Now I tried using html export from FileMaker and with Simple HTML DOM I tried this:

public function parse($file_name){

        include 'xml/simple_html_dom.php';

        // Create DOM from URL or file
        $html = file_get_html(base_url("xml/$file_name.htm"));

        foreach($html->find('th') as $header => $hr){
            echo $hr;
            foreach($html->find('td') as $content => $td){ 
                echo ($td == "<BR>") ? '': $td;
            }
        }        


    }

This goes pretty ok but can't read all the stuff in a way I can load line by line into the DB... Is there a best solution?

Answer 1

If you're trying to pull data out of a FileMaker XML record export you could use the SimpleXML tools like SimpleXMLElement to access the data within the nodes:

$string = <<<XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<FMPXMLRESULT xmlns="http://www.filemaker.com/fmpxmlresult">
    <ERRORCODE>0</ERRORCODE>
    <PRODUCT BUILD="04-17-2014" NAME="FileMaker" VERSION="ProAdvanced 13.0v3"/>
    <DATABASE DATEFORMAT="M/d/yyyy" LAYOUT="" NAME="XMLTest.fmp12" RECORDS="3" TIMEFORMAT="h:mm:ss a"/>
    <METADATA>
        <FIELD EMPTYOK="YES" MAXREPEAT="1" NAME="id" TYPE="NUMBER"/>
        <FIELD EMPTYOK="YES" MAXREPEAT="1" NAME="test" TYPE="TEXT"/>
        <FIELD EMPTYOK="YES" MAXREPEAT="1" NAME="name" TYPE="TEXT"/>
    </METADATA>
    <RESULTSET FOUND="3">
        <ROW MODID="3" RECORDID="1">
            <COL>
                <DATA>1</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>test</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>Chris</DATA>
            </COL>
        </ROW>
        <ROW MODID="3" RECORDID="2">
            <COL>
                <DATA>2</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>jaslfk;jad</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>Ruthie</DATA>
            </COL>
        </ROW>
        <ROW MODID="3" RECORDID="3">
            <COL>
                <DATA>3</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>iiiii</DATA>
            </COL>
            <COL>
                <DATA>Zoe</DATA>
            </COL>
        </ROW>
    </RESULTSET>
</FMPXMLRESULT>
XML;

// This is required for FileMaker record exports since they're namespaced
$string = str_replace('xmlns=', 'ns=', $string);

$xml    = new SimpleXMLElement($string);
$result = $xml->xpath('//RESULTSET');

echo "<pre>";

foreach($result[0]->children() as $row){

    echo "<ul>";

        // This shows how you can pull the specific attributes from a give node.
        echo "<li>record: " . $row->attributes()->RECORDID->__toString() . "</li>" ;
        echo "<ul>";

        // This shows how you can drill down to a specific node and pull a node value.
            foreach($row->COL as $column){
                echo "<li>" . $column->DATA->__toString() . "</li>" ;
            }

        echo "</ul>";
    echo "</ul>";
}

A couple of special notes:

• The line $string = str_replace('xmlns=', 'ns=', $string); is required because FileMaker namespaces it's xml
• I'm using xpath to grab the values, but you can also use the SimpleXMLIterator tool to walk through the structure as well

Answer 2

I've had decent success using an XML export and the class described here:

http://thomasoandrews.com/wordpress/2011/02/24/parsing-huge-xml-exports-from-filemaker-with-php/

(Note - I'm not the author of this).

You're correct about XML adding a lot of overhead - the only thing you can do i think is to only export the fields you need.