LVBeginner

Hey Guys

Just wanted to thank everybody one more time for all the help. My program is working now and the problem I was having was not on my side. I am able to send an xml file using the ActiveX object WinHTTP successfully. The problem was that they didn't resolve my IP address properly.

Thanks again

Igor

QUOTE (rolfk @ Apr 27 2009, 02:56 PM)

Well I can't even access it so I have no idea what it looks like, or what it does. I don't even know that it exists for real when going there with my webbrowser.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Thank you Rolf

I think that they haven't given me access to their server even though I have given them my IP address which I would be using for the data transfer.

Thanks to everybody for the responses I think I have to try and hunt down somebody at that company.

QUOTE (rolfk @ Apr 27 2009, 02:48 PM)

And what the heck is hermes???????????????????????????????????????

Rolf Kalbermatter

I think it is the name of the server that I have to post my data to: http://hermes.plexus-online.com 

That is the website that I can't even do a GET method on

QUOTE (rolfk @ Apr 24 2009, 07:02 AM)

When I browse to that server I get a dialog box that only IE is allowed to go there. When I use IE I get a login page. Now looking at the HTML code there seems to be some scripting done for this functionality. So it seems you would have to not only send a User Agent but in fact a very specific User Agent.

Trying with the OpenG VI a bit I can see that you need to use at least following information:

GET \ HTTP/1.0\r\n

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; WWTClient2; OfficeLiveConnector.1.3; OfficeLivePatch.0.0)\r\n

Host: www.plexus-online.com\r\n

\r\n

to get a valid response. You probably can get rid of some of the software versions about .NET and Office in the User Agent string.

But that response contains JAVA scripting so there is the next problem!!!! I don't think you want to implement Java script in LabVIEW

Rolf Kalbermatter

You tried http://www.plexus-online.com' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">www.plexus-online.com right? I can do a GET method on that page with my ActiveX program. It's when I try to do anything with the hermes server page, that I can't get any response from it.

QUOTE (asbo @ Apr 23 2009, 07:06 PM)

I think there's still some kind of configuration issue at hermes' end -- can you browse to the page in your browser? If so, you might have to fake a UserAgent header or the like. I get the security policy error you mention when trying to browse to the page, however.

I can't browse to the page with my browser, tried IE, Opera, and Mozilla. I have tried everything, and I'm coming to the point where I'm thinking that there is still some configuration to be done on hermes' end.

My biggest problem is that I can do a GET method and get a bunch of html displaying as a response. I can do a GET with my ActiveX WinHTTP on pretty much any site. www.plexus-online.com I use to punch in at work and hermes.plexus-online.com would be used for the uploaded file from me. How come I can do a GET on the first webpage, but when I'm trying to do a GET on the hermes server I get the error that my security policy denies me access. My IT guy has opened up ports for the hermes server but it still doesn't work.

I was thinking that maybe the people that work with this hermes server haven't resolved my IP address even though I have given it to them?

Sorry if the question is out of this forum but I need help

Thank you

QUOTE (Mark Yedinak @ Apr 23 2009, 03:55 PM)

If you are only sending some basic pages to the server I think you would be better off building your strings and sending them via the native TCP connections. If you do a trace using your ActiveX version you should see what messages are being passed to the server. Your earlier version may have simply been missing a message that was generated by the ActiveX component. The TCP VIs are fairly basic. You would essentially need to use three of them. They would be the open, write and close VIs. More likely than not you will want to open the connection on port 80. What types of problems were you encountering?

With TCP/IP connections I was trying a simple GET method but I would get ERROR 56 which gave an explanation from LabVIEW: The network operation exceeded the user-specified or system time limit. Here is a screenshot of a simple client that I just made.

Is there anybody that has worked with the ActiveX object WinHTTP successfully before so that they could maybe look at my code and help me out.

Thanks

I don't really need to use ActiveX. I tried it with TCP/IP before I used ActiveX and that didn't work out. So I looked into using ActiveX object WinHTTP and it was actually easier to build then my TCP/IP program that I had.

Could you maybe post a little more code that shows how you make a connection?

I'm using LabVIEW 8.0 and LabVIEW 8.2 and the XML-RPC client/server project project in the code repository requires LabVIEW 8.5 and above.

Thanks

I have made a program that takes a xml file and sends it to an off-site server. My problem is that the value of the content-length header will not change to the number I specify. I use wireshark to check what my request header looks like, and the content-length value never changes no matter what I put down. Does WinHTTP make up his own content-length?

Thank you

QUOTE (mesmith @ Mar 19 2009, 03:17 PM)

I think typically the outgoing port will get assigned by the OS sockets layer for most implementations - it just selects an unused port. Run "netstat" from the Command Prompt and you can see what local ports are used for a connection. I don't know anything specific about WinHTTP that might be different.

Mark

I'm connected to the internet through a proxy server is there anyway that I can specify which port I want ActiveX to use?

Does anybody know which port is used by ActiveX objects? I'm using WinHTTP and I want to know which port is used for outgoing packets.

Thank you

Ok I took the advice and made a program using ActiveX WinHTTP object to send an xml file to a off-site server. Now I have included a screenshot of the program and I was wondering if anybody has experience with it to help me out. I get the error that the server name or address could not be resolved. I have tried other webpages and I used the method GET and I got all kinds of html data from it. Thank you

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 10 2009, 04:16 PM)

well :xxx is the port number, which default to 80 for http. Sounds like a firewall somewhere is blocking other ports. Again, start with

telnet <ip address> <port #>

from the command prompt to make sure the network is working end to end.

Have fun!

Thank you very much for all the help. I think there is a problem with my proxy server. When I try telnet www.w3.org #port, and for #port I used the proxy server port and made www.w3.org as an exception and used proxycfg.exe to adapt the settings from the IE. I still can't connect to anything so I think my proxy server needs some modification.

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 10 2009, 02:01 PM)

Well there's nothing wrong with a URL of the form http://192.168.1.100/myfolder/myfile.html. If you have machine names they are just converted to the numbered address sooner or later (probably sooner). If you don't know what's supposed to come after the IP address, no one on this board can help you. You have to find whoever wrote the server.

I think that this is my problem with my WinHTTP program. I have everything setup and I can get all kinds of html data from any website that I put in to the URL tab of the OPEN method. Now today I wanted to start and POST data to a server as a test and somebody setup a listener for me. The location of the listener was given to me as an IP address appended by ":XXX", X's being numbers. What bothers me here is that I can do GET on any other website but the one that they supplied me with I can't.

They told me that they DNS doesn't have a name so everything has to be in IP addresses. I was just wondering if that would be my problem why I can't use GET with the IP address.

I'm using the ActiveX object WinHTTP to post xml data to a server. Now in the OPEN method the url has to be absolute. Now I only have the IP address of the server, and my question is can I somehow convert the IP address to an absolute url?

Thank you

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 4 2009, 08:25 PM)

Yeah as soon as I asked, I thought of a half-dozen things I might want to do programmatically over HTTP. In our own app, we do some of this, and we use the ActiveX Object "WinHTTP", which is part of Windows. It handles proxy servers and lots of other stuff and makes a lot more sense than rolling your own. Unfortunately as a "LVBeginner" you probably didn't want to muck with ActiveX right away, but I think it would end up being a better use of your time.

There is also some .NET equivalent which is totally different but I don't know anything about that. It might be easier to use.

You got it as soon as I looked a little bit into ActiveX, I thought "Ohhh hold your horses there LVbeginner". I figured that TCP/IP would be more straight forward, well at least it was while I was reading about it.

Thanks I gues I will look more into the ActiveX portion.

Okay one little question...should I use the WinHTTP or the WinINet feature.

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 4 2009, 08:13 PM)

By the way, what are you really trying to do? It seems likely that your proxy config only affects port 80, and no one in their right mind writes a program to implement the HTTP protocol in LabVIEW when there are other free programs which do a far better job of browsing the web.

I don't want to browse the web. I have to write a program that will allow a user to transfer some data to an off-site server. Eventually I'm hoping to make that all automatic so that it will do that every hour or so. Right now I wrote a program that will ask for users input and make a xml file to a specific format given by the off-site server company. Now I have to send the xml file via the internet to the off-site server. I wanted to test the TCP/IP in a simple http client program before I go and adjust my program.

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 4 2009, 08:03 PM)

Well that's good, you've learned that this is not a LabVIEW problem. Is your web browser able to connect? In your web browser's advanced settings, is there a proxy configuration? Presumably if some of these are non-standard, then you have an IT department which can help you more than I can. Good luck.

Well that's good. Just found out that there is a proxy configuration. So now I will go to my IT department and see what they can do for me.

Thanks for all the help

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 4 2009, 07:28 PM)

Generally the firewall is for incoming connections, unless your IT department is super-restrictive. Nobody can get any work done if they block port 80, so that is usually not going to be filtered out. On the client side (that's you) there is no ability to filter specific programs out.

Since that's true, the next thing to do is to open a Windows Command Prompt (Start -> Run -> CMD)

1. ping the server to make sure you can resolve the address (of course sometimes servers disable ping, but www.w3.org does not)

2. telnet to the server and type the your message.

I entered "telnet www.w3.org 80" and then I typed in your GET statement, and it spit a bunch of HTML back at me.

3. try the same thing again in LabVIEW. Your program is basically doing the exact same thing as telnet. Be sure to note exactly which VI or function is throwing the error.

Note that you may have to install telnet, since that's part of Microsoft's policy of burying all the really useful stuff or not installing it by default.

How are you getting a timeout from TCP Open when you have the timeout = -1 (forever)? It seems more likely that you are connecting, but getting a timeout in TCP Read, since you are asking for 100,000 bytes in Standard mode. You may want to try Immediate mode. The help file has more information about TCP Read and its modes.

I typed in "telnet www.w3.org 80" then it said connecting to www.w3.org, but after a while it said that the connection to the host on port 80 could not be opened...connection failed

QUOTE (jdunham @ Mar 4 2009, 06:46 PM)

Well port 3363 is the VI Server port, which is specific to LabVIEW. It's highly unlikely that www.w3.org would be listening on that port. Try port 80.

Totally untrue.

Well I tried that too, still no luck. Does it maybe have to do anything with the windows firewall maybe, even though labview is already an exception.

Thanks

QUOTE (mesmith @ Mar 4 2009, 06:18 PM)

TCP Open Connection won't do a domain name lookup for you and resolve the address - put the IP address of the server in the address box and try again

I tried soing that but I get the same error 56 from LabVIEW. Is there something maybe I forgot to change in the options of LabVIEW?

Thanks for the quick reply

Ok I have this simple HTTP server for testing purposes of the LabVIEW server and TCP/IP sockets. Now I can't get the TCP Open Connection function to open a connection. I get error 56 which is timeout error. I have turned TCP/IP on and I have turned the web server on in the LabVIEW options. I have also tried different ports but I can't establish a connection. Can somebody please help me out.

I'm using LabVIEW 8.0 and have attached a screenshot of the .vi.

QUOTE (jdunham @ Feb 23 2009, 07:28 PM)

Well no and yes.

XML is just text, so there's nothing to stop you from writing a program in any language and running it on the machine that is receiving the data.

However if your using the LabVIEW schema, which was written for NI's convenience more than for yours, then writing that program gets a lot easier if you are using LabVIEW on both ends.

I forgot to tell you sorry...I'm using a schema that is provided by the off site company that handles our servers. It is way more understandable than what you would get from just the flatten to xml function. So would that mean that they don't need to have LabVIEW?

Thanks for the quick reply

Hi everybody,

I have a program that asks the user for input and then the input is converted to xml format. I was wondering, because I have to send the saved xml file to a specific web address, does the other computer need to have LabVIEW on it or not. Basically the program takes information about an assembly line, for example parts produced, hits on tools and others, right now that data is entered in by hand and processed by the company that handels our servers. But none the less all I wanted to know is if the other computer is required to have LabVIEW or not.

Thank you