SmartPill PHP Edition™ by Scodigo

Ok, I admit it. Until recently, I've tried to steer clear of FileMaker Pro plug-ins. I can't explain why, exactly. Maybe it was my fear that adding plug-ins might cause FileMaker to become unstable (which is an unfounded fear, I realize now). Or maybe I didn't want to have to admit that there are things that I sometimes need FileMaker to do that it simply can't do "out of the box."

Over the past year or so, I've changed my ways. I wouldn't say that I'm a plug-in addict, but I'm definitely more open-minded than I used to be. In the past few months, I've tested many different plug-ins, and I'm much more productive as a result. I feel empowered -- like I'm running FileMaker on overdrive. There are things that I'm doing with FileMaker these days that I never thought would be possible -- and wouldn't be possible without all of these cool plug-ins.

In fact, it's safe to say that there are projects that I couldn't have pulled off without plug-ins. Troi's URL Plug-in and Text Plug-in are two that come to mind. Absolute lifesavers. (If you haven't seen Troi's plug-ins, I urge you to take a look at them. You'll be glad you did!)

So last week I was in a meeting with our local FileMaker rep and her boss, and they mention something called "SmartPill." "You can use it to run PHP within FileMaker," they claimed. "Nahh," I thought. No way. I didn't see how this was possible, and figured that I was simply misunderstanding what they were saying. Besides, I had never even heard of SmartPill before. In any case, I wrote down the name of this mysterious plug-in that they had been raving about, and the name of the company that has developed it ("Scodigo"), and figured I'd look into it later on.

So this evening I was thinking about the meeting, and realized that I hadn't checked out the plug-in that they had mentioned. I dig around and find my notes, I Google "SmartPill," and find a link to something called SmartPill PHP Edition™ | Scodigo. I click the link, still not sure of what I'm in for...

And there it is. "With SmartPill PHP Edition™ you have all the power of PHP at your fingertips right inside your FileMaker applications."

And there's a long list of things that they say you can do with it. "Send and receive email." "Send and receive files using FTP." "Encrypt and decrypt your data." It sounds too good to be true. But then there are the quotes from people like Matt Petrowsky, Jonathan Stark, Andy Gaunt, and Chris Hansen (who now works at Scodigo!). So I figure there must be something to this thing, and I download it...

And a few minutes later I've got it loaded up, and I'm experimenting with it, and sure enough, it does exactly what it claims to do: You really can use SmartPill to run PHP code from within FileMaker. No kidding. Honest.

This plug-in is amazing!

So what does SmartPill do for you, exactly? Well, it makes many PHP functions available to you for use within FileMaker Pro itself. For example, you can use PHP's email and FTP functionality. You can consume Web services. You can encrypt and decrypt data. You can take advantage of PHP's XML-related functions. You can use regular expressions! (I repeat: Regular expressions! In FileMaker Pro!) The list goes on and on and on. And while the plug-in doesn't give you access to ALL of the PHP functions that exist, it does provide access to a lot of them.

Don't ask me how the folks at Scodigo managed to pull this off. I have no idea. But they have, and I suspect that our lives as FileMaker developers are going to be much better off as a result.

Did I mention that this plug-in is amazing?

Best of all, you don't have to install anything other than the SmartPill plug-in itself. You don't even need to have PHP installed! Just download the correct version (there are three: one for Mac OSX on Intel, one for OSX on PowerPC, and one for Windows), drop the plug-in into your FileMaker Pro Extensions folder, start up FileMaker, and you're in business.

You can download SmartPill and it will run for up to 30 minutes before it needs to be registered. For evaluation purposes, Scodigo offers a 30-day trial license, available here. Pricing for SmartPill starts at $59 for a single user license, and quantity discounts are also available. (You can get pricing details here.)

I really can't say enough good things about SmartPill. I encourage you to download it and experiment with it. Even if you don't know PHP, I think you'll quickly see how powerful SmartPill is, and I suspect you'll want to learn more about PHP as a result.