Update: See Jason Wood’s suggestion in the comments section for making this technique more secure.
INTRODUCTION
Today I want to take a look at a certain Perform Script On Server (PSOS) behavior, and for those who find this behavior to be inconvenient, propose a work around.
Here’s the behavior, or misconception, actually: a server side script initiated via PSOS (apparently) cannot access files on the server unless the user already has those files open locally. But of course there may be circumstances where you’d like to be able to access files server side that the user does not have open client side, either because the user’s credentials do not allow access to those files, or because you’d rather not have to open the files client side merely to facilitate a PSOS call.
If we consult the online help entry for running scripts on server, the official word is that server-side scripts can access other FileMaker files only when…
…in other words, if you want PSOS to be able to access files, you need to either a) already have the files open client side, or b) throw caution to the wind, and configure the hosted files to auto-open with pre-entered credentials.
Hmmm… I think we can agree that from a security standpoint “b” is a non-starter, and the whole point of this article is to avoid “a”. Fortunately there is a “c” option not mentioned above which I’ll get to shortly, but first let’s demonstrate the issue. Continue reading “PSOS – Run Script in File not open Locally”
