We released the first version of RESTfm back in 2012 and although we talk about it at every DevCon, it’s our least understood and used product. Developers at the conference can easily see the benefits of a tool like BaseElements and they understand the concepts of RefreshFM.
But only a minority of FileMaker developers we meet would also work in Web Services. So RESTfm as a paid product only appeals to those who already know what they’re looking for. But RESTfm is so much more. We use it to :
- Deliver solutions to iOS.
- Register users via one time login codes.
- Post invoices written in the field to the accounts department.
- Allow a Siebel solution to talk to FileMaker Server via BizTalk.
- Run a complete syncing product on iOS and Desktop.
- Deliver FileMaker data to a native iOS app.
Web Services makes these sorts of things possible.
RESTfm makes it not only possible, but easy to do from your existing FileMaker solutions. And we want more people to be able to try it out and see this for themselves.
So we go Open Source
So we’ve turned RESTfm from a paid only product into an Open Source model and added a paid annual sponsorship instead. We’d like all FileMaker developers to try out RESTfm and see what sorts of things they can do with Web Services in their FileMaker Server data.
The RESTfm code is available now at our GitHub repository, under an MIT Licence :
https://github.com/GoyaPtyLtd/RESTfm
and can be downloaded here :
https://github.com/GoyaPtyLtd/RESTfm/releases/download/v3.4.0/RESTfm-3.4.0.zip
Support packages include our free syncing framework, a set of sample files and access to a paid only support option. Sponsorship is $199 for individuals or $399 for companies of more than one developer.
We’ve already got plans to continue growing both RESTfm and our sample code and sync framework, and we hope that by making RESTfm Open Source, more people can see the benefits that we’ve already taken advantage of.