We often work on projects that intersect two technologies near and dear to us: FileMaker and Ruby. This allows us to build robust web applications in Ruby on Rails, integrated with data sources from FileMaker solutions. When Claris introduced the FileMaker Data API we were naturally curious to try it out. At the time there was no off-the-shelf Ruby library for us to simply gem install, so we decided to roll up our sleeves and build one. Thus, fmrest-ruby was born.

This article will walk you through setting up and using fmrest-ruby in a Ruby on Rails project. Some level of familiarity with Ruby/Rails and FileMaker’s Data API is advised, although much of the content covered here is applicable to any Ruby project, Rails or not.