OpenEuphoria

1. Can I http POST a file

• Posted by ChrisB (moderator) Jan 29, 2013
• 2385 views

Hi

I wish to be able to link my program to my drug suppliers ordering system.

This is an extract from the data interface specs

This is quite a simple system to integrate with as it just requires the client system to POST a simple text file to a URL, and a reply text page is given back as a response. The URL used for posting to is the same for all commands.

The URL is; http://(removed for confidentiality)

Note: Although the system uses the HTTP POST command, you are not able to POST the order via a web page FORM, as the layout of the data is not the same as that generated by a FORM. The POST must be done via an application.

The format of the text file needed to be sent is the same for both ordering and delivery data. It is made up of a header section and a details section. The header section is a list of key/value pairs separated by TAB characters, with the header section terminated by a blank line. The details section is specific to the command being performed;

Example header section;

COMMAND<tab>ORDER
AUTH<tab>YES
USER<tab>JC1
DEL<tab>0
PASSWORD<tab>pass
REFERENCE<tab>000185
CUSTORDERREF<tab>001/000186
TEST<tab>TRUE
<blank_line>

Am I able to do this using euphorias http_post. ie can I post the text file, or do I need to put the key value pairs into the data object.

Chris

3. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by CoJaBo2 Jan 30, 2013
• 2285 views

It doesn't look like theres an option in the HTTP lib to send a raw POST body; there really ought to be.

(Incidentally, wow, drug orders and passwords over HTTP? Are you sure this site is legitimate?)

5. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by bugmagnet Jan 31, 2013
• 2272 views

I've just had a look at the docs, and yes, there's no way to specify a custom body.

What you're left with then, is to badger the devs into giving you the option of a custom body, or else write your own http_post function. What platform are you running on? You could either explore the option of wrapping the operating system's library for http transactions (e.g. for Windows), or else wrap something like libcurl.

According to the libcurl site there is support for Euphoria. However, following the links takes you to the site of one Raymond Smith who, it would appear, has given up on Euphoria altogether. He has, however, made his eulibcURL sources available. Some work will need to be done to bring these into line with the most recent version of Euphoria.

Regards,
bugmagnet

7. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by ChrisB (moderator) Jan 31, 2013
• 2195 views

Hi

Thanks.

Yes, but it would end up being delivered to the practice that ordered it, not some random dealers cafe!

Cheers

Chris

9. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by useless_ Feb 01, 2013
• 2163 views

I can't use Euphoria now. Euphoria-4.0.5-Jan30-2013 still has the match-replace memory leak which crashes the programs, and Euphoria-4.1.0-29-Jan-2013 just starts up and dies without doing anything.

useless

11. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by SDPringle Feb 03, 2013
• 2064 views

The original poster should look at the section on MULTIPART_FORM_DATA in the manual. I think this is what the original poster needs. He can use this with http_post.

13. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by m_sabal Feb 04, 2013
• 1984 views

Just curious, how would Eu4's http implementation handle POSTing an XML file over HTTP, a common request in SaaS?

15. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by useless_ Feb 04, 2013
• 1919 views

As you wish, but what i contributed to eunet was so i could upload data files however i liked. I simply did not care how it was expected in html handlers. I used this to remotely, in a hidden fashion, put Tiggr on the web.

useless

17. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by gbonvehi Feb 05, 2013
• 1896 views

According to curl's man page

-d/--data <data> 
              (HTTP)  Sends the specified data in a POST request to the HTTP 
              server, in the same way that a browser does when  a  user  has 
              filled  in  an  HTML  form and presses the submit button. This 
              will cause curl to pass the data to the server using the  con‐ 
              tent-type   application/x-www-form-urlencoded.    Compare   to 
              -F/--form. 
 
              -d/--data is the same as --data-ascii.  To  post  data  purely 
              binary,  you  should  instead use the --data-binary option. To 
              URL-encode the value of a form field you may use --data-urlen‐ 
              code. 
 
              If  any  of  these  options is used more than once on the same 
              command  line,  the  data  pieces  specified  will  be  merged 
              together   with   a   separating  &-symbol.  Thus,  using  '-d 
              name=daniel -d skill=lousy' would generate a post  chunk  that 
              looks like 'name=daniel&skill=lousy'. 
 
              If  you start the data with the letter @, the rest should be a 
              file name to read the data from, or - if you want curl to read 
              the data from stdin.  The contents of the file must already be 
              URL-encoded. Multiple files can  also  be  specified.  Posting 
              data from a file named 'foobar' would thus be done with --data 
              @foobar. 

So, untested and taken from Eu4's docs, the following should work:

include std/net/http.e 
include std/io.e 
 
sequence inputfile = "YOURFILE" 
sequence data 
sequence file_content 
file_content = read_file(inputfile, BINARY_MODE) 
-- According to net.e source, if sequence(data[1]) then contet type is urlencoded 
data = { { "filename", file_content, inputfile, "text/plain", ENCODE_BASE64 } } -- You may try ENCODE_NONE here 
object result = http_post("http://example.com", data)  
if atom(result) then  
   printf(1, "Web error: %d\n", result)  
    abort(1)  
end if  

Regards,
Guillermo

Edit: I've just realized that -d "filename=@filename" doesn't include the file contents, I thought it did, I went ahead and tested without filename= part and that includes the content but it seems to concatenate lines without EOL separators which I guess is not the desired input.

To achieve a similar POST request (this is correctly splitted with EOL chars in Eu4 simply change

data = { { "filename", file_content, inputfile, "text/plain", ENCODE_BASE64 } } -- You may try ENCODE_NONE here 

data = file_content 

Edit2: Should've been BINARY_MODE

19. Re: Can I http POST a file

• Posted by gbonvehi Feb 05, 2013
• 1867 views

I'm glad to help, you may want to try using url:encode(data) before sending it too to convert non printable chars to their hex escaped value (%09, %20, etc).
If you cannot get it to work with Euphoria but with something else like Curl, you could watch what it's being sent to the server using Fiddler or Wireshark and post it here (without confidential data of course) so we can spot what changes may be required to satisfy your requirement.

Cheers,
Guillermo