Check if iUrlOpen returns what your expecting

How to Check if iUrlOpen Returns what You're Expecting

 Keywords:  iUrlOpen iHttpOpen Error 404 File Not Found

Question:

I am using iUrlOpen to get a webpage. How can I check if it returns what I am expecting?

Answer:

iUrlOpen is not that smart. You should consider using iHttpOpen instead. iHttpOpen will return an HTTP response code from the server (i.e. 200 - for success, 404 - file not found).

If you insist on using iUrlOpen, it gets a little more complicated. You will have to know some real information about the page that can be returned upon success or upon failure.

iUrlOpen will return the datahandle of zero if it encounters a Wininet error (i.e., 12007). To capture that WinInet error, you can use iGetLastError, but this will not tell you whether or not the page returned is valid or not.

AddExtender("WWINT34i.DLL")
tophandle=iBegin(0,"","")
datahandle=iUrlOpen(tophandle,"http://xxx.yyy.com");
if datahandle == 0
   err=iGetLastError()
   Message("WinInet Error",err)
   iClose(tophandle)
   exit
endif
iClose(tophandle)
exit

If you want to check the page itself, to make sure it's the page you're thinking it is, and not, for exampe, a 'File Not Found' page, you will need to actually read the file data. Then either search for the text you're expecting in the webpage, *OR* maybe search for the text in the 404 message set up for that server.

Note: Different servers can return any kind of 404 message....

This example will search for a 'File Not found' message.

AddExtender("WWINT34i.DLL")
tophandle=iBegin(0,"","")
datahandle=iUrlOpen(tophandle,"http://www.windowware.com/asldalsd/lghjghj");BAD URL
if datahandle == 0
   err=iGetLastError()
   Message("Wininet Error",err)
   iClose(tophandle)
   exit
endif
;Make sure to allocate large enough buffer to hold the entire file
size=10000
buf=BinaryAlloc(size)
;Get address of buffer
bufaddr=IntControl (42, buf, 0, 0, 0)
BinaryEodSet(buf, size)
iReadDataBuf(datahandle,bufaddr,size)

;str=BinaryPeekStr(buf, 0, size)
;message("Contents of Buffer",str)

ret =BinaryIndexEx(buf, 0, "File Not Found", @FWDSCAN, @FALSE)
if ret != -1
  Message("404","File Not Found")
Endif

iClose(datahandle)
iClose(tophandle)
Message("All","Done")
exit

Article ID:   W14556

Filename:   Check if iUrlOpen returns what your expecting.txt

File Created: 2001:10:05:10:27:38

Last Updated: 2001:10:05:10:27:38

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How to Check if iUrlOpen Returns what You're Expecting

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