Changes to PHP Bundling with FileMaker Server

If you're using any of our PHP Webhook files installed on a FileMaker Server running on the Windows platform please aware of the following changes that Claris have made to how PHP is bundled. Claris have announced that PHP will no longer be bundled with FileMaker Server on Windows and macOS. The last versions of FileMaker Server that bundled PHP were FileMaker Server 19.3.3 for macOS and FileMaker Server 19.1.2 for Windows.

Windows

Starting with the FileMaker Server 19.2.1 update PHP is no longer installed with FileMaker Server for Windows - you should preserve your existing PHP installation first by backing up the PHP folder and restoring it after the upgrade is complete. See the FileMaker Server 19.2.1 Release Notes for further information.

If you are installing FileMaker Server 19.2.1 on a new Windows server you will first need to download and install PHP before you can enable Custom Web Publishing with PHP using the fmsadmin command line:

fmsadmin set cwpconfig enablephp=true

Please refer to this article on the Claris Engineering blog for further details on installing PHP for Windows. Another option is to use the PowerShell script that is included with the Admin API Tool from Soliant - click here for more details.

macOS

Starting with version 19.4.1, FileMaker Server no longer installs a PHP engine on macOS. FileMaker Server upgrades will not remove a previously installed PHP engine, but new installations will no longer provide PHP.

Please refer to this article on the Claris Engineering blog for further details on installing PHP for macOS.

Whilst Custom Web Publishing with PHP is being deprecated we still provide Webhooks for the newer FileMaker Data API. These are also PHP files but do not use the FileMaker PHP API/Custom Web Publishing. You will still need to install these on a server running PHP whether that is your FileMaker Server machine or another web server.

We also support using Claris Connect Webhooks as an alternative to hosting the PHP files. If you are also a Claris Connect customer you can setup Webhooks in Claris Connect to receive incoming messages from your SMS Gateway. This is usually a much simpler process than using the supplied PHP files for the FileMaker Data API as you don't need to worry about hosting the files and dealing with web servers, PHP configuration changes, port forwarding etc. You can get more information on setting up Claris Connect Webhooks in our Getting Started guide.

If you are using the Twilio SMS Gateway make sure you reference the Twilio Webhooks using Claris Connect article as Claris Connect has native support for handling incoming messages from Twilio.