can this be done in ASP?

Bard · 17-08-2001 2:47pm #1

Web server A has a web site hosted on it with a particular text file and is running Unix/Apache (I believe).

Web server B has a web site hosted on it and is running IIS 4.

I want to create an ASP page on the web site on web server B that can retrieve said text file that text file from web server A and then do stuff to it.

The question is IF this can be done in ASP without installing any server components... and if so, HOW?

Bard

'First motorbike in the bible ???? ---- a Triumph --- 'Yea verily Moses struck down the ammmanites and all the land heard the roar of his triumph !!!'

Slosh · 17-08-2001 4:00pm

Sure... at the end of the day you're still opening a text file, albeit on a different server.

Take a gander at the filesystem object.

S.

phaxx · 22-08-2001 2:09am

So far I've had no experience whatsoever with ASP, but anyhow...

Create a connection to webserver A, mimic a browser's request for that file. Below are the headers you'll need to send:

GET /path/to/file.txt HTTP/1.0
Host: remote.webserver.name
Accept: text/html, text/plain, text/sgml, */*;q=0.01
Accept-Encoding: gzip, compress
Accept-Language: en
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
User-Agent: hello
Referer: (stick the address of your asp script here - not required, but it's a good idea)

When you do that, read from the socket and you should get something similar to this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:19:06 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) PHP/4.0.4pl1
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.0.4pl1
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html

&lt;html&gt;
...etc

Note that to signal the end of the headers, send a blank line, and then the webserver goes to work and gives you the file. [edit]same rule applies to the server's headers and data for you. stupid code tag in ubbcode ignores blank lines.[/edit]

Of course, in PHP, you can just do $data = file("http://url.com/file.txt"); and it does all of the above...
file() is used to access local files too.
I believe there is a win32 port of php, you might want to check that out, or, alternatively, use a real operating system to host the site. :P

[This message has been edited by phaxx (edited 22-08-2001).]

The Corinthian · 22-08-2001 9:25am

Originally posted by Slosh:
Sure... at the end of the day you're still opening a text file, albeit on a different server.

Take a gander at the filesystem object.

Don't be silly. It's accessing the document remotely by requesting it from a server not the other machines filesystem. PHP just gives that impression because it uses the same command.

The old down and dirty method of doing this on IIS was to instansiate the Inet dll (many 3rd party components such as ASPTear actually just did this):

Set Inet = Server.CreateObject("InetCtls.Inet.1")
Inet.RequestTimeOut=20
Inet.Url = "http://www.boards.ie/"
sResponse = Inet.OpenURL
Response.Write(sResponse)
Set Inet = Nothing

Most IIS servers will have the XMLHTTP componant installed, which I think IIS 5 is shipped with:

Set objHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
objHttp.open "GET", "http://www.boards.ie/", False, "", ""
objHttp.setRequestHeader "foo","bar"
objHttp.send
sResponse = objHttp.responseText
Response.Write(sResponse)
Set objHttp = Nothing

It's a lot more powerful and stable than using the Inet dll, so I'd try that first. Hope this helps.

"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton

Alis · 22-08-2001 12:18pm

In my experience the Inet dll is just plain flakey when used in the method you suggest.

ASP Tear or XMLHTTP should do the trick but I think the "IIS 4 & no server components" requirements would rule that out.

I'm thinking their must be something you could use, but if there is it is not coming to mind, I've always used components for this kind thing.

I don't suppose you have access to that Unix/Apache box. It might be easier to set up a system there which allows the file to be called from any page via a JavaScript include. If you do, say, and I'll explain how you do that, it is very easy

Other than that I've seen some inventive techniques used by content grabbing ASP developers who have sites on webservers that they can't add .dlls to.

Check out this:
http://coveryourasp.com/GetNews.asp

Bard · 22-08-2001 12:32pm

Set Inet = Server.CreateObject("InetCtls.Inet.1")
Inet.RequestTimeOut=20
Inet.Url = "http://www.boards.ie/"
sResponse = Inet.OpenURL
Response.Write(sResponse)
Set Inet = Nothing

gives this...:

Server object error 'ASP 0177 : 80040112'

Server.CreateObject Failed

/test.asp, line 2

80040112

XMLHTTP and ASP Tear, etc. are not an option. It's IIS4, has XML Parser 2.5 (I think... I know it's not v.3 anyway) and I can't install additional components. Neither can I install PHP. I'm not going to get into the argument about "using a real operating system to host the site" - it's NT4 with IIS4 - that IS a real operating system, and it's the system I know and have to use.

Bard

'First motorbike in the bible ???? ---- a Triumph --- 'Yea verily Moses struck down the ammmanites and all the land heard the roar of his triumph !!!'

The Corinthian · 23-08-2001 12:33am

Originally posted by Alis:
In my experience the Inet dll is just plain flakey when used in the method you suggest.

ASP Tear or XMLHTTP should do the trick

FYI, ASP Tear actually just uses the Inet dll. Moot point, I know.

btw, are you following me around Alis?

Originally posted by Bard:
Server.CreateObject Failed

On IIS? Very Odd - should be there. Might be registered with a different creation string. Do a search of MSDN to see if there are any variants to this.

Another thing you can try is using the old IE5 XMLDOM for this purpose. The creation string is "microsoft.xmldom" and it gets a url using the a Load method, if I remember correctly.

"Just because I'm evil doesn't mean I'm not nice." - Charlie Fulton

can this be done in ASP?

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