OpenEuphoria

Internet Access

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> Jun 15, 2000
• 889 views

[Warning: This is as really a long-winded wish list disguised as a question]

I've been reading (with some amount of envy) about the Rebol language
(http://www.rebol.com). Stuff like web access, ftp and email all appear
trivial in Rebol. Here's an example script that reads the raw contents of an
html file and emails it:

send luke at rebol.com read http://www.rebol.com/releases.html

Rebol supports at the following, across various platforms:

   HTTP (web)
   SMPT (sending email)
   POP (reading email)
   FTP (file transfer)
   NNTP (news)

It seems to me that it would be a Good Thing if Euphoria also supported
these in a uniform, cross-platform manner.

Some of this no doubt exists already, and I'm simply to dense to understand
it. So I'm hoping that people can whack me with a clue stick and help me out
here.

I'm primarily interested in being able to read web pages. I was thinking of
something along the lines of:

   read_http( <web address> )

that would return the contents a file from the web. The application I had in
mind would read through a bulletin board and gather conversation threads for
off-site viewing.


[Question: If the page required cookies, would the routine have to accept
cookies in order to work?]


Anyhoo, I took a look at Daniel Bernstein's EuFTP package, but that deals
with FTP, not HTTP.

[Taking a stroll into Wish List Land...]

For completeness, we also need:

   read_ftp()
   read_binary_ftp()
   write_ftp()
   write_binary_ftp()

And since Rebol provides an interface to email, of course I want Euphoria to
provide that as well.  Stealing shamelessly, I was thinking of something
like:

   open_mailbox() -- open a mailbox for reading
   clear_mailbox() -- empty a mailbox
   write_mailbox() -- send a message to a mailbox
   read_mailbox() -- read the current message in the mailbox
   remove_mailbox() -- remove item from mailbox
   next_mailbox() -- read the next message in the mailbox
   close_mailbox() -- close a mailbox

I took a brief look at the email demo that Robert includes with Euphoria. Is
there a special reason why the message goes to my Outbox, instead of being
send immediately? Where can I get more information on this protocol?


[End of Soap Box/Wish List]

If someone could point me in the right direction for writing a read_http()
function, I'd appreciate it.

Additionally, I'm wondering if there actually is any interest in putting
together a cross-platform library of Rebol-like web functions for Euphoria.

-- David Cuny