Reading offsite files... or not?

[maxmillian]

okay, that sort of worked, the one in quotes up there.

[Wormopolis]

yeah that doesnt go anywhere either. I think you are on a secure server if that is opening something.

[RedBassett]

This one (the first one) works fine for me:

www.haborym.com/xmas%20time/tiller%20rep%20gifts.txt

[Wormopolis]

ok weird. that one originally was broken, but this time it went somewhere. the links from the last post didnt however...

[Maxmmillian]

Not sure why the weirdness, sometimes the www. in front works, sometimes it needs to not have it, very strange indeed. Could be due to the way the dns table is working with the shared hosting. either way though the exact file is irrelevant as you can pick any file that can be read from the internet for the question as it is not based on the file but the how to read an external and if it is possible to read external text file.

the problem is that I want to read the contents of a text file or xml from within the proboards forum. The only way I can figure out how to do this is using java since there are no other languages that can be used with proboards for doing this (I think it all has to be client side so there could be other languages I suppose that 'might' work, not sure with proboards though) but java should be fine for reading a text file into variables or for string manipulation purposes. I would love to see some built in xml tools

So completely and utterly basic scenereo.

A text file named thisfile.txt holds a single line of text. The single line of text being 'thisimg.jpg' .
I want to read that file, have the text 'thisimg.jpg' in my variable, so I can then use that information to load that particular image.

The text file 'is' on an external server outside of proboards.

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It would be nice if proboards would allow automatic file dropping even if it was text files only, maybe even a pay service per meg or gig or whatever so that we could automate file dropping into that area via ftp or by setting up an automatic download for that area of a file(s). that would solve everything.

[maxmilliand]

Well, this should help a lot instead of doing this as guest all the time.

[Wormopolis]

well I was going to see if I could make an iframe work for the content, but I needed a valid url to content to test with. stay tuned.,

[maxmilliand]

okay Hopefully the url will work. I am still unsure why it seems to work and then not work. That is weird considering there is no downtime on the server. So sorry if it seems unstable. I really don't get that part so will lay it at the feet of the dns table as before

[maxmilliand]

Okay, the whole www. vs not thing was bugging me more and more so I contacted my hosting service and asked them to fix their dns table. Apparently they found (big surprise) a second A Host listing. Now it should be stable for whatever. www.haborym.com/xmas%20time/tiller%20rep%20gifts.txt

[Chris]

If I am understanding correctly, this is a browser security issue applicable to any domain not just Proboards. The problem basically is trying to access and manipulate a file from a domain other than the one that is currently displayed in the browser, for security reasons a cross-origin policy preventing this is in effect, an iframe for example could grab the file but disallow access to the contents since it is not served from the same domain as the current page and this would also apply to XmlHttpRequest objects.

The good news is that with the exception of Opera mini all current major browser platforms now support CORS so if your hosting service allows it you can enable then use CORS

[maxmilliand]

If you use the URL above you will see a text file displayed, I want to read or copy that information into variable space to manipulate. not sure if that breaks it down a little better or not. not sure on the iframe thing, but I'm hopeful. What about pushing it from the other domain like an rss feed to java on my proboards forum? I'm rather new to java so just trying to come up with some sort of outside the box ideas.

[maxmilliand]

hmm.. I poked about a bit with iframe, I can display the text file within proboards now, but not actually access the text itself to read or manipulate it, which is what you mentioned Eton. That would even work except tat I need one piece of information for the file that I can manipulate. hmm.. and hmm again.. I might be able to put in a loop to load a file with filename 1.txt, 2.txt etc.. with the only file being there named say 20.txt so that it would continue to loop until it found a file that was there, ie not generate a 404 type error.. can I do that in javascript within proboards? capture the error of 404 or file not found to run the loop? That might be a duct tape code way to do it.. will look into error trapping/code capturing in java I guess. (so far, I am liking server side languages much better, way more control of stuff )

[Wormopolis]

the farthest I was going to be able to go was display the text file. if you are looking to alter contents then I wont be able to do it.

[maxmilliand]

Thanks for the help anyway Wormopolis, its a shame we don't have a place to just put files or auto upload files or something for admins and such. I've come up with a couple of way way out of the box and out of the state ideas.. one being rather slow and clunky (the looping idea above) and the other being turning all the text files into pngs and just loading pngs. Neither of these ideas are ideal, but might be the only workable solution due to cross domain.

[Wormopolis]

well dropbox.com will make it easy to setup a place to store a file that can be shared with other people, but they cant just open it make changes and resave it. you might be able to have everyone on the same dropbox though.