macOS VB - Reading/Writing from txt file on server

[Aperture]

Hey Everyone,

I've been learning how to use the IO.StreamReader command in Visual Basic and I wanted to know if it is possible to use IO.StreamReader to read the contents of a txt file on a web server, as opposed to just a local file. Also, is it possible to have VB write to a txt file on a web server?

The idea behind this is to have an application running on all the client computers and every so often have the application to find a txt file on a webserver and have it display the contents.

Thanks

 

[kainjow]

I dug up some of my old .NET code and found a C# class I had used. You need to create a WebRequest object, then use its GetResponse() method to get a WebResponse object, then use the WebResponse method GetResponseStream() to return a Stream. From the Stream object you can build a StreamReader to read the downloaded content.

 

[ChrisA]

Hey Everyone,

I've been learning how to use the IO.StreamReader command in Visual Basic and I wanted to know if it is possible to use IO.StreamReader to read the contents of a txt file on a web server, as opposed to just a local file. Also, is it possible to have VB write to a txt file on a web server?

The idea behind this is to have an application running on all the client computers and every so often have the application to find a txt file on a webserver and have it display the contents.

Thanks

No you can't read files on a server. You have to use HTTP to get anything from a web server.

But you are in luck because there is a widely used free utility that does what you need "wget" that will pull files from a web server. You don't have to write a program just a short script. Maybe just pipe wget's output to "grep" and look for the string you want.
See more here http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/

Put wget inside a short shell script and have it run periodically from the cron table. (See "man cron".)

 

[Aperture]

kainjow, I used your method and I'm still having some trouble. Here is my code so far..

Imports System
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Text

Public Class Form1
    Private Sub btnGo_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnGo.Click
        Dim sURL As String
        sURL = "http://www.URL.com/test.txt"

        Dim wrGETURL As WebRequest
        wrGETURL = WebRequest.Create(sURL)

        Dim objStream As Stream
        objStream = wrGETURL.GetResponse.GetResponseStream()

        Dim sr As IO.StreamReader = IO.File.OpenText([COLOR="Red"][U][B]objStream[/B][/U][/COLOR])[I] (See below)
[/I]
        Dim read As String
        objStream = [COLOR="SeaGreen"][U][B]sr.ReadLine[/B][/U][/COLOR] [I](See below)[/I]

        lstOutput.Items.Add(read)

        objStream.Close()
    End Sub
End Class

"Value of type 'System.IO.String' cannot be converted to 'String'."
"Value of type 'String' cannot be converted to 'System.IO.Stream'."

Any Ideas?

Thanks

 

[LL2]

Reading from .txt file on server.

Idk about writing a file (I would like to know how to do this also..)
But for reading a file, you could do this:

Dim Web As New WebClient
Dim TXT As String = Web.DownloadString("yourURL.txt")
BoxWithText.Text = (TXT)