[Tutor] FW: Retrieving a text file with a URL call

alan.gauld@bt.com alan.gauld@bt.com
Fri, 6 Aug 1999 15:02:25 +0100


> the users hard drive.  We have found that using DDE we can 
> complete this 
> task with users that have NetScape; however, IE does not support the 
> parameter to specify where the file needs to be saved.
> 

Aargh! Using DDE for that is a poor way forward. Its slow, 
unreliable and very fragile in the face of changes to Netscape.

A much better approach is to simply use a socket interface
(or prebuilt HTTP one and suck the raw HTML back from the 
server, parse and format it up yourself(using an html component) 
and save as a file. This will typically be 4-5 times faster 
than the DDE route and less liable to damage if Netscape changes.

You can do this in VB, Delphi, Perl or, of course, Python. 
They all support components which can help you do that.

If you know C then you can do it from scratch using straight 
sockets too.


Alan G.