How does FMP handle uploading files to FMS?
The case at hand: new files are locally stored in the filesystem of the server machine (i.e. /User/NewFiles that hosts FMS. Now I want to upload them to FMS, using FMP on my Laptop (remote).
Does FMP transfer the files to the laptop before uploading them to FMS?
FMP uploads files from a volume to a server. The volume can be local or remote. Remote volumes must be mounted prior to upload. Files must be closed prior to upload.
Hope this helps.
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I’ve never really thought about this before, despite doing it frequently. You choose the files from the original source volume, which are verified prior to being available for upload.
I’m sure someone else actually knows, but I guess I have always thought that these would be duplicate files stored somewhere due to the time the verification can take on large files. However, a quick check of the (Mac) var/folders/ contents did not obviously yield any duplicate files. Each copy of FileMaker always creates a ‘FMTEMPFMnnnn_n.temp file in one of the sub folders and nothing is listed in the FileMaker temporary folder listed by Get ( TemporaryPath ).
Again a guess, but it looks as if the source files remain in their location, but all network traffic must come from your server machine, to your laptop and returned to FileMaker Server.
This is what @bdbd has said much more concisely, but I was intrigued to have a look. Anyone else know any more?
Doing so would imply a file share being active on the FMS machine; which is fraught with danger. OS file share misconfigs are a leading cause for FM file corruption + it is another attack vector on the server and a means by which malware can get on it.
If the files are already on the server why not just move them in place? Why try to use FMP to do the upload?
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Thank you for pointing to best practise. I was just wondering how FMP is handling the upload in that particular case of source file location.
The connection between FMP and FMS is one connection, the connection between the file's physical location and FMP is another connection, using a different protocol.
So the files would 'stream' from the network share to FMP and then 'stream' back up to FMS.
The 'download' would involve normal OS-level file sharing disk i/o operation and the 'upload' would involve FM's connections to the FMS web service end point to accept the file and manipulate it.
So it would be very inefficient.
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I'm sure that there is no "short-cut" being used. The files will have to be transferred from the server to your laptop to be available for input via FMP. FMP will then store the data, transferring it back to the server.
If you moved the files into the FileMaker Server Documents directory you could run a script that will import them without having to pass them back and forth across the network.