Keyword Index

Object: SPNet

This is a static, top-level object used to create connections to HTTP (World Wide Web) and FTP servers and to perform various related tasks. The SPNet object always exists and is never explicitly created or destroyed. Since it is a top-level object, methods in this object do not have to be preceded with "Net.".

Method: getDirectoryFromURL

Version added: 1.1

Returns the whole URL except for the file name and any terminating anchor.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Remarks:

Note that this only works if a complete URL ending in a file name is given. A url like "http://www.flyingobject.com/images" is ambiguous in that "images" could be a file or directory and only the server knows for sure! This method will assume the last item is a file name and remove it.

Method: getFileFromURL

Returns the file name portion of a URL. If no file name is specified, this returns an empty string. It does not attempt to substitute a name such as "index.html" as this is server dependent.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getFileURLFromURL

Version added: 1.1

Returns the whole URL except for any terminating anchor and arguments.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getHostFromURL

Returns the host portion of a URL.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getImagesFromHTML

Extracts a list of all image references found in the given HTML text.

Returns:

An array of strings representing the URLs of images found on the page.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getLinksFromHTML

Extracts a list of all links found in the given HTML text.

Returns:

An array of strings representing the fully-qualified links found on the page.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Remarks:

For the purposes of this method, all HREF references and all frame references are counted as links.

Method: getPathFromURL

Returns the path portion of a URL, i.e. the string of directory names between the host name and the file name. This can be empty.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getProtoFromURL

Returns the protocol portion of a URL.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getRefFromURL

Returns the anchor reference from a URL, i.e. the portion after a "#" hash mark, if any.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Method: getTextFromHTML

Extracts the visible text from an HTML file, that is, it removes all HTML commands and other browser data and leaves only the text that would be visible to a user on the page. This is intended to allow searches for text data in the user-visible area of a Web page.

Returns:

String - The text extracted from the HTML.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Example:

// This downloads an HTML page and puts up an alert box if it
// finds the word "NetPad" in it.

if (getTextFromHTML(getURLText("www.disney.com")).indexOf("NetPad") >= 0)
{
    alert("Found a reference to NetPad!");
}

Method: getURLBinary

Loads binary data from the given URL and returns it as a string value. Only HTTP URLs are supported in this version, i.e. the URL must start with "http://".

Returns:

SPArray - A byte array containting the data loaded from the given URL.

Errors:

An exception is generated on any error.

Remarks:

This method provides a quick way of loading binary data (e.g. images) from a Web resource for cases where no error recovery, progress reporting or other options are needed. For more complete features, use the SPInternet object.

Method: getURLText

Loads text from the given URL and returns it as a string value. Only HTTP URLs are supported in this version, i.e. the URL must start with "http://".

Returns:

String - The text loaded from the given URL.

Errors:

An exception is generated on any error.

Remarks:

This method provides a quick way of loading text from a text Web resource for cases where no error recovery, progress reporting or other options are needed. For more complete features, use the SPInternet object.

Example:

mickeysLinks = getLinksFromHTML(getURLText("www.disney.com"));
writeFile("c:/disney links.txt", "" + mickeysLinks;

Method: rawTextToHTML

Version added: 1.1

Generates the HTML code necessary to display the given raw text as is.

Returns:

String - The text converted to HTML.

Errors:

No errors are reported.

Remarks:

If the input string contains no characters that are special in HTML, no changes are made and the same string is returned. If the input string contains any characters that could be intepreted as special by an HTML interpreter, they will be to the appropriate &xxx; HTML metachar.

Example:

// This displays a sample of HTML code on an HTML page, i.e. escaping the
// HTML tags so they won't be intepreted by the browser.

text = rawTextToHTML("<TITLE>The Page Title</TITLE>");
file = "c:/Script Pilot Samples/html example.html";
writeFile(file, "<html>" + text + "</html>");
run(file);

Method: SPFTP

Creates a new SPFTP object, used for send and receiving data to/from servers using the FTP protocol.

Creates an unnamed SPFTP object connected to the given server.

Create a named SPFTP object. The given name can be used to connect to events generated by object in the process of interacting with servers.

See Also:

Method: SPInternet

Creates a new SPInternet object, used for retrieving data from World Wide Web sites. NOTE: This version supports only the HTTP protocol, i.e. URLs starting with "http://"..

Creates an unnamed SPInternet object.

Create a named SPInternet object. The given name can be used to connect to events generated by object in the process of interacting with servers.

Example:

h = SPInternet("Web");
h.getURL("http://www.disney.com");

function Web_Done()
{
    writeln("We got it!");
}

See Also: