Security tidbits for FileMaker

We talked about various things at the FileMaker conference in Rome and security is a concern for everyone. Especially as scripted attacks got frequently.

Rename Admin

Have you ever put a FileMaker Server on the internet? You may note that people knowing your address try to connect with various account names and passwords. You may want to rename the Admin user everywhere to another name. Since there is a chance someone may try the Admin account and FileMaker locks accounts for 5 minutes if you have 5 incorrect passwords for login within 5 minutes, you may run into the Admin account be blocked. Just use a different name to avoid this.

Validating schema for electronic invoices with ZUGFeRD

When receiving invoices in electronic formats, you have several tasks to implement:

1. Receiving invoice via email.

   You may use our CURL functions to regularly download emails from your IMAP postbox and use our EmailParser functions to get the attachments. That may include the ZUGFeRD PDF invoice file. Or a pure XML file with invoice data.

2. Extract XML for invoice from PDF

   Use DynaPDF functions (Lite license or higher) to extract XML from a PDF file using functions for embedded files.

   We have sample projects for this included with the plugin download.

3. Validate the XML to match the schema using the ZUGFeRD XSD files

   Make sure the XML is syntactically okay, doesn’t produce a parse error or a schema error.

   Below we show how to do this with MBS FileMaker Plugin in FileMaker.

4. Validate whether the content of the invoice is validate for the business rules

   There is a file included with ZUGFeRD download with the rules (.sch file). For example this specifies that the VAT ID starts with the country code, which is not part of the schema in step 3. Implementing this in FileMaker can be a lot of work, but at least you can use our XML.Query function to help.

5. Read values from XML.

   Several people coded the import and the script depends on your field schema in FileMaker. Check our example file and maybe use it as a start. Our XML functions can help and you may read a lot of files simply with a call to XML.GetPathValue.

MBS @ FMTraining.TV - 14.4 MonkeyBread FileMaker Plug-in Release

Check out the FMTraining.tv website. Richard Carlton and his team do a daily free live stream about FileMaker to watch.

A few days ago Christian Schmitz from Monkeybread Software joined a live episode to talk a bit about the MBS FileMaker Plugin. Watch it on YouTube.

We check what is new in 14.4 release: Announcements, new functions and Release Notes.

Little tidbits from the FileMaker conference

Back from the conference in Liechtenstein, I wrote down a few of the tidbits we learnt.

Missing serial numbers

If you use serial numbers for new records in FileMaker, you may notice that sometimes the serial numbers have a gap. Why could this happen?

• Someone deleted a record
• Someone created a record, but never committed it.
• FileMaker crashed or network got disconnected while a transaction runs, so it never completes.

You need to know that on record creation, the client will request a new serial number from the server. If the record doesn't get committed or gets reverted, the serial value is used, but no record saved. If you like to make sure the serial number doesn't get lost, please call Commit script step after creating the new record to make sure the empty record is definitely stored.

Please consider moving to UUID numbers instead, so people can't get the serial numbers and they are more random but unique.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 14.5pr2

• Added field comment to the tooltips for the export dialog.
• Fixed an issue in Window.PositionNextDialog function for Windows.
• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.94.265.
• Added DynaPDF.GetAnnotColor and DynaPDF.GetTextBBox functions.
• Fixed an edge case with swiss keyboard layout for RemoteControl.PressKey function and the virtual key lookup.
• Added sample script into extras to launch two FileMaker on macOS, one with HTTP tunneling on and one with it being off.
• Optimized XML functions to better handle thread locking.
• Improved error handling for XML.ApplyStylesheet.
• Added some auto complete for custom functions for parameters and function names:
  • Table occurrences
  • Field names after ::
  • Operator names
  • Function names from function list
  • Parameter names
  • Get/Hole/Obtenir functions
  Invoke with fn-F5 in the dialog or we auto invoke it for you.

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Table comments in FileMaker

Recently someone asked about comments for a table and whether we could do something there. In the FileMaker community you find a couple of ideas around this topic, so we through why not. Let us add a comment text for the table definition section of the manage database dialog.

But we run into a couple of questions like where to store comments. Should the plugin store them somewhere or should FileMaker store them. Would we have some kind of user interface to enter the comment?

We can't just store comments in a local preferences file since others would open the database file and miss the comments. We can't store them in a new separate table as that would not survive clone and migration process. We decided to leverage the existing field comments in FileMaker to define a new field _TableComment to store it. Just define a field (can be global) and add a comment there. FileMaker stores the comment and provides the user interface to enter it.

MBS FileMaker Plugin, version 14.5pr1

• Updated DynaPDF to version 4.0.93.262.
• Updated CURL to version 8.10.1.
• Fixed crash with running Python on Windows.
• Added DynaPDF.GetAnnotTextAlign function.
• Added DynaPDF.ClearLicense function.
• Added JSON.InsertRecords function to insert array of records in JSON.
• Updated to libxml2 version 2.13.4.
• Updated to libxslt version 1.1.42.
• Updated LibXL to version 4.4.0.
• Updated OpenSSL to version 3.3.2.
• Note: SSLv3 is disabled now.
• Updated libarchive to version 3.7.6.
• Changed Archive.Content to skip GID, UID, Permissions, RDev, FileType and HardLink fields, if not set.
• Updated zxing library to newer branch.
• Improved Barcode.Detect by using newer zxing library.
• Added Barcode.DetectAsJSON function.
• Updated to Xcode 16.0.
• Updated jpeg library to version 9.6.
• Fixed CURL Multi functions, broken in 14.4.
• Added a field to database design dialog for tables to show comments. To add a comment, define a field _TableComment and put comment text there.
• Fixed an issue with GMImage.WriteToPDFContainer and Twain.Acquire on Windows.
• Added Text.FilterSwissQRCode function.
• Added DynaPDF.GetGlyphIndex and DynaPDF.GetGlyphOutline functions.
• Updated discount library to version 2.2.7d.
• Added Audit.BuildCaches function.
• Updated unicode tables for removing accents for Text.RemoveAccents function.

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