FileMaker TIP: Getting Rid Of The IWP Login Page

If you use the Instant Web Publishing (IWP) feature in FileMaker to expose your database(s) via the Internet, there may be times when you want to disable the default login screen, or change the design of it, or even allow the user to "automatically" login as a guest via a web link.


When you first enable Instant Web Publishing (on your FileMaker Server Advanced) - and you navigate to the default address (http://YourServerIPAddress/fmi/iwp/res/ipw_home.html) you'll see a screen that looks like this:

However, it's pretty easy to create a login form that you can put on your own site, or even create a HTML link that will allow users to go directly into the database as either a specified authenticated user or a guest.

If you want to have a form that allows them to enter a user name and password like the above form, then it's pretty simple to create a html form (or add code to an existing page in your site). Here's the code you'll need:

There are two things you need to change: in the "action" part where it says "localhost/fmi..." change that to be the URL (or IP address) of your FileMaker Server machine where the database is open, AND change "db=Web_Tester" to "db=YourDatabase" where YourDatabase is the exact name of your database (minus the ".fp7" extension).

If you want your users to just be able to login as a guest - there's a slightly modified version of the same form:

If you would rather provide a link rather than a form - here's the code for the Guest access:

You still must change the "localhost" to your own IP and URL and also change "Web_Tester" to the name of your database - but do not change anything else or the link won't work. FileMaker must have the "dbpath" variable url encoded or the link will simply not work.

It IS possible to have a link that will automatically login with a specified account - it's very similar to the guest link above:

Notice that there is an account name and password variable in there. So, you can just replace name=Admin with the name of your account and put in the password after password= (but before the &).

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you choose to use an authenticated account to "auto login" - make very sure you thoroughly test your application and apply the correct permissions for that account for all the various CRUD functions (create, update, delete) - as well as to any scripts, calculations or functions that would expose data or functionality that you wouldn't want everyone to have access to. This is especially important because the account name and password will be in plain text for the whole world to see! The last thing you need is your (or your customer's) data hijacked. So be careful and test, test, test!