Hi all,
I’ve got a very obscure problem. We’re trying to get Rails to talk to
Filemaker. So we’ve setup an ODBC dsn and via RubyODBC we’re talking
to it. Excellent. Try it under rails and rails won’t even startup,
getting bus errors anytime we require ‘odbc’.
Environment
OSX Tiger 10.4.6
Rails 1.1.2
Ruby 1.8.4
RubyODBC 0.998
via IRB:
irb(main):001:0> require ‘odbc’
=> true
via Rails (in environment.rb added require ‘odbc’)
rowanh$ script/console
Loading development environment.
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.5.0/ODBC.bundle:
[BUG] Bus Error
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [powerpc-darwin8.5.0]
Abort trap
OR
rowanh$ script/server
=> Booting lighttpd (use ‘script/server webrick’ to force WEBrick)
=> Rails application started on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server (see config/lighttpd.conf for options)
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.5.0/ODBC.bundle:
Failed to lookup Init function
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.5.0/ODBC.bundle
(LoadError)
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in
require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.3.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:147:in require’
from /Users/rowanh/framework/public/…/config/environment.rb:9
from /Users/r
Any thoughts/ideas ?
Many Thanks,
Rowan
www.rowanhick.com
On 30 May 2006, at 15:21, Rowan H. wrote:
Ruby 1.8.4
RubyODBC 0.998
First of all, if you get it to work, please share it, I could really
use it…
However, a very important remark: Filemaker ODBC sucks. It’s slow as
hell, leaks memory and can even hang your entire system in the long
run. At least, it was the case with filemaker 6 or lower. If you can,
you better use Filemaker Web Companion (assuming you’re on Filemaker
Server 5.5, you’ll also need a Filemaker client running your
application) and try to parse Filemaker XML into a Rails-like
structure. I once did some very preliminary tests, here’s the code of
the ruby file (you’ll need to install xml-simple)
require ‘net/http’
begin
require ‘xmlsimple’
rescue LoadError
begin
require ‘rubygems’
require_gem ‘xml-simple’
rescue LoadError
abort <<-ERROR
The ‘xml-simple’ library could not be loaded. If you have RubyGems
installed
you can install xml-simple by doing “gem install xml-simple”.
ERROR
end
end
Net::HTTP.start(‘127.0.0.1’,80) do |query| # replace 80 with
different port number if needed
response=query.post("/FMPro","-db=FilemakerFileName.fp5&-format=-
dso_xml&-lay=layoutwithonlynecessaryfieldsforspeed&-max=all&-find")
cfg = XmlSimple::xml_in(response.body)
p cfg
cfg[“ROW”].each do |value|
value.each do |key,value|
puts key.to_s+" - "+value.to_s
end
end
end
I would love to see someone write a wrapper class for Filemaker
access (or a connection adapter for that matter), but it’s going to
be a lot of work and time and a decent amount of ruby knowledge (i
have neither :-)). I did write such classes for REALbasic a few years
back and I can honestly say using Web Companion + XML really flies
(FX.php also uses it btw).
Please keep me informed on your progress and don’t hesistate to call
for help if you have questions about the XML itself!
Best regards
Peter De Berdt
Hi Peter
Subsequent to this I’ve just tried loading odbc in the dispatch.fcgi
file, so it’s the first thing that gets loaded and it works ! So we’ve
got our connection up and running…
We’ve tried using the xml/xsl approach, the problem with it is:
- we have to do too much work everytime we want to expose something to
rails (we have a huge legacy db that needs only snippets pulled).
- I also have to write as well as read (therefore posting as well)
- too many links in the chain
The theory at the moment is Rails sits ontop of MySQL with Filemaker
off to the side. Initially our models will use the native RubyODBC
stuff for talking to Filemaker, but as we do more work we’ll mold an
ActiveRecord adaptor for it. It’s just figuring out what filemaker
does/doesn’t support. Our models will decide what they want to
cache/write to/from Filemaker on demand. Although we’re also looking
at syncing directly the data required from Filemaker to Mysql without
going through Rails.
My Filemaker guru tells me we’re on version 8 now, he said there were
huge odbc improvements going from 6 to 7, so you can be sure we’ll let
you know how we get on.
Cheers
Rowan
On 5/30/06, Peter De Berdt [email protected] wrote:
Subsequent to this I’ve just tried loading odbc in the dispatch.fcgi
file, so it’s the first thing that gets loaded and it works ! So we’ve
got our connection up and running…
Great, I thought of this just before seeing your message appear on
the list
We’ve tried using the xml/xsl approach, the problem with it is:
- we have to do too much work everytime we want to expose something to
rails (we have a huge legacy db that needs only snippets pulled).
- I also have to write as well as read (therefore posting as well)
- too many links in the chain
True, there was quite a lot of work involved to hide the drawbacks in
my REALbasic classes too.
The theory at the moment is Rails sits ontop of MySQL with Filemaker
off to the side. Initially our models will use the native RubyODBC
stuff for talking to Filemaker, but as we do more work we’ll mold an
ActiveRecord adaptor for it. It’s just figuring out what filemaker
does/doesn’t support. Our models will decide what they want to
cache/write to/from Filemaker on demand. Although we’re also looking
at syncing directly the data required from Filemaker to Mysql without
going through Rails.
There’s Garrison Computer Services :: Products :: fmSQL Synch but I
haven’t tried it out. But it’d be very interesting to see a Rails
integrated solution.
My Filemaker guru tells me we’re on version 8 now, he said there were
huge odbc improvements going from 6 to 7, so you can be sure we’ll let
you know how we get on.
My former job was Filemaker 7/8 development, the job before was
Filemaker 4/5/6 development. In my current job, I’m still supporting
a very big Filemaker 6 solution, which we are converting to Rails/
MySQL (because we’ve had it with Filemaker for a number of reasons,
mostly speed, interoperability and licensing issues). I’ve had to
deal with ODBC/JDBC a number of times, both in version 6 and 7/8.
Filemaker Server Advanced has indeed succeeded in eliminating a
number of ODBC issues.
Good luck, I wish you the best and am looking forward to your feedback!
Best regards
Peter De Berdt