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Post URL |
Sends data to the server, using the POST method, and returns the result as raw data.
Syntax
Post URL [ Select ; Result ; Switches ; URL ; Post data ]
Options
| Select entire contents | replaces the entire contents of a field with the result. If not checked the result replaces the currently selected portion of the field |
| Result | the raw data returned (or an error code) |
| Switches | this determines the behavior of the plug-in |
| URL | the url of the server |
| Post data | the data to be sent with the POST method |
Switches
Switches can be one or more of these:
| -TimeoutTicks=x | specify the connect timeout time in x ticks (1/60th of a second) |
| -ReturnHeader | include the header in the returned text (at the beginning) |
| -ReturnDataAfterError | return the error code followed by the data |
| -Portnumber=y | specify the port number to use |
| -NotEncoded | send the post data without any normal encoding for "www-form-urlencoded" |
| -DontAutoRedirect | the plug-in will not go to a redirected page but return the original page |
| -AllowAnyRootCertificate | (for HTTPS) allow root certificates from unrecognized certification authorities. Note that this is less secure |
| -ExtraCRLFafterData | an extra CRLF (carriage return and line feed) character is added at the end of the Post data |
| -AlwaysSendUserPassword | will directly send the username + password, even when this might not be necessary |
| -DontTryWithUserPassword | don’t send username + password when the web server requests authorization |
| -Encoding=ISO_8859_1 | encodes the data in ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) |
| -Encoding=UTF8 | encodes the data in UTF-8, and also the resulting data |
| -DontDetectEncoding | disable automatic UTF-8 encoding detection, instead keep the native encoding |
Returned Result
Data type returned
Text
Result
If successful it returns the data of the URL. If unsuccessful it returns an error code starting with $$ and the error code. Returned error codes can be:
| $$-1 | user cancelled | |
| $$-4230 | the connection timed out | |
| $$-3242 | this protocol is not supported (use only http and https) | |
| $$-30776 | authentication error, you need to supply a correct user name and password | |
| $$-92 | servername part of the url is too long | |
| $$-2110 | path part of the url is too long |
Other errors may be returned, specifically errors in the range 300 to 599, which are HTTP Status Codes.
Originated in
Troi URL Plug-in 5.0
Compatibility
FileMaker Pro 16 to 19
Considerations
Secure connections (HTTPS) using SSL are also supported on Windows and macOS.
If you don’t specify a timeout, a default timeout of 15 seconds is used.
See the user guide section “How to make sense of a web form”, to determine what you must send to make the form work.
The length of the URL is limited, by both the plug-in and receiving servers. A lot of web servers don’t support URLs longer than 2048 characters. Note that the plug-in has higher limits of 32867 characters for the URL. The 5th parameter “Post data” has a limit of about a half GB of characters.
On macOS you might need to set cookies to get the desired result. See the TURL_SetCookies function.
See also TURL_SetCustomHeader for special headers, that may be needed, for example in a form.
The plug-in can automatically detect UTF-8 encoded web pages (and encode them correctly). This is enabled by default, and is determined by looking for the meta and charset tag in the HTML result of the Post URL script step. For an XML result the “encoding=utf-8” tag will also be detected.
Example
Post URL [ Select ; Result ; "-unused" ; "http://www.idninc.com/cgi-bin/sherlock.cgi" ;
"name=troi" ]This will send the form data “name=troi” for the Sherlock form “cgi-bin/sherlock.cgi” to the server www.idninc.com and return the result. This will return something similar to:
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>COMPANY SEARCH</TITLE></HEAD>
<body><CENTER><!--BANNER_START--><A HREF="http://www.BestSiteFirst.com">
<IMG SRC="http://www.idninc.com/images/banner.gif" border=0></A>
<!--BANNER_END-->
...
<!--SEARCH_RESULTS_START-->
<P> <!--RELEVANCE-->100<!--END_RELEVANCE-->
% <A HREF="https://www.troi.com">Troi Automatisering: For FileMaker Pro plug-ins</A>
<UL>Check out the latest FileMaker Pro Plug-ins from Troi Automatisering. </UL></P>
...
<!--SEARCH_RESULTS_END-->
</UL></BODY>
</HTML>Example 2
We assume that in your FileMaker file the following fields are defined:
theURL Text
gTimeOutTime Global, numbertheURL should contain the URL, for example “http://www.filemaker.com”. In a script add the following script steps:
Set Field [ formData ; "name=troi&number=123456" ]
Post URL [ Select ; resultText ; "-TimeoutTicks=" & gTimeOutTime ; theURL ; formData ]This will post the form data to the URL specified and return the result as raw HTML data. If the server does not react the script step will timeout after gTimeOutTime ticks and an error code of “$$-4230” will be returned.
Related script steps
| Delete URL |
| Get URL |
| Put URL |
Related function
| TURL_Post |
Related topics
Troi URL Plug-in online help (overview)
