Passing variables, writing text files, etc

**daverobev** · 21-11-2003, 04:55 PM

Right. I know no VBScript, JavaScript, or anything, only a little HTML (but I'm willing to learn!).

What I'm trying to do is this:

Someone clicks a link on a webpage.

The link takes them through to a redirect page on our server, which takes the place they want to go to from the address, writes that to a text file, and redirects to the end page.

EG:

go to www.startpage.com/links

click the link http://www.daverobev.com/blah/defaul...=www.hexus.net

Write www.hexus.net to www.daverobev.com/blah/data.txt

redirect to www.hexus.net

I can do all of the things I need to do.

The problem is, I can't do them all at once. I'm using someone else's code from other webpages we use, plus bits and bobs learned from the net.

We use (I think) VBScript to do the writing to text file from a form.

I'm using JavaScript to get the url.

So I can quite happily redirect using java and a function that gets a text string starting at the = of www.site.com?url=, and store that in a variable...and then use window.location = "http://" +variable.

Help?

**këö¬t** · 21-11-2003, 06:21 PM

vbscript and javascript are clientside scripting languages. e.g. everything occurs on the visitor's machine.
if what you're trying to do is write a file onto the clients machine, then remember that the majority of broswers disallow this, what with nasty pr0n dialers and their ilk.

if you want to write to a file on the server you need a server-side scripting language like asp or php. i'd personally recommend php as i learnt it before i learnt a bit of asp, and i prefered the former.
http://www.php.net/ is a good start. problem is your server must support php or asp, otherwise you could try cgi (if your webhost supports it) which seems like a monster to learn (simple programs look like you've bashed your head against the keyboard a few times.) another alternative is jsp.
If your webhost doesn't support any of those, then erm, pay more...

hth

**Shad** · 21-11-2003, 07:44 PM

Most ASP programs are written in VBScript. If you have never done any programming before, VBScript is highly recommended as it has easy to follow syntax and easy to follow core functions.

But don't let me influence your decision

**daverobev** · 21-11-2003, 11:13 PM

Yeah sorry I was getting a bit confused, its ASP the stuff that I had already, not VBS (hence not having <script language="VBScript"> and </script> duh!)..

I think I need to do this over two pages....or, 4 pages, depending how you look at it.

Page of links -> page that gets the URL into a form -> page that writes the URL to textfile and redirects to -> where the person who clicked the link wants to go!

And yes, the textfile is on our server, so we log the number of hits to a clients website..or rather the number of hits through the links page!

**Shad** · 22-11-2003, 07:50 AM

Can be done with one page.

Code:

<%

If not isempty(Request.Querystring("myparam")) then
    WriteToLogFile()
    Response.Redirect(QueryToURL(Request.Querystring("myparam")))
End if

Response.Write("<a href=""" & Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME") & "?myparam=whatever"">My link</a>")

%>

WriteToLogFile() is a sub which takes care of the logging or writing to text file and QueryToURL() takes the query string and converts to your URL.

This is just an example of a way to do what I think you're trying to do

**Mart** · 22-11-2003, 08:23 AM

I thought I was the only one up this early! Shad beat me by a few minutes.

Save the code below as linklog.asp, change the path of the log file and off you go.

Code:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
    Dim szURL
    szURL = Request.QueryString("url")	
    If szURL <>  "" Then
        Dim oFSO
        Dim oLogFile
		
        Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
        Set oLogFile = oFSO.OpenTextFile("c:\temp\log.txt", 8, True)  '8 for append
        oLogFile.WriteLine(szURL)
        oLogFile.Close

        SET WriteStuff = NOTHING
        SET myFSO = NOTHING

        Response.Redirect("http://" & szURL)
End If
%>

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>

<A href="linklog.asp?url=www.hexus.net">www.hexus.net</A>
<BR>
<A href="linklog.asp">www.hexus.net</A>

</body>
</html>

**Mart** · 22-11-2003, 08:30 AM

The other way of getting the info you need analyse your IIS logfiles. You could get some code to do this or import into excel and sort by page column and then by querystring column.

This is the entry from my log and you can see the url passed to linklog.asp.

2003-11-22 06:59:47 127.0.0.1 - 127.0.0.1 80 GET /doctor/linklog.asp url=www.hexus.net 302 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.0;+.NET+CLR+1.0.3705)

**Shad** · 22-11-2003, 08:36 AM

Nice post Mart

I'd advise against putting the target url in the query string though, anybody could put their own url in an manipulate your logs.

Maybe base64 encode it or use a table of urls and only pass a primary key.

I mean if you want to take it further, what's there will work nicely

**daverobev** · 22-11-2003, 08:15 PM

I think I get most of that...could you clarify a couple of things please Mart?

szURL...what does the sz stand for? I get oObject, and things like cCharacter and dDate..

Where in that

szURL = Request.QueryString("url")

bit does it strip out the current URL and only take the bit past ?URL=...does Querystring do that? If so, how does it read the current URL of the page in?

If not, where is the bit that reads the page location?

I'm not stupid, I'm just finding my feet with this OOP stuff!

And thanks to all for the help, I could just use a few more comments in the code like...this line means this, etc. I'd much rather be given the building blocks and find the solution myself than have it all handed to me

Ta,

Dave

**Mart** · 22-11-2003, 10:57 PM

The answers in order.....

1. I use sz for string variables , comes from being a Visual C++ developer. (see Hungarian notation)

2. The querystring is all of the text in a url after the question mark. It is made up of name=value pairs. Each pair is seperated by &. In the example there is only 1 pair. The QueryString method of the Request object takes a name and returns its associated value. (If it exists). It saves you having to dig through the querystring text yourself.

3. All the links within the page point back to the page itself. The url of the destination is passed as a querstring variable. If there is a name value pair with name 'url' then the code will retrieve the value and redirect the page to the destination.

So all the links would have to like.....

<A href="linklog.asp?url=www.hexus.net">Go to hexus!</A>

instead of.....

<A href="www.hexus.net">Go to hexus!</A>

The last link would miss out the logging step completely and go straight to the destination.

**daverobev** · 23-11-2003, 08:12 PM

Hi,

makes sense, I was kinda mulling it over in my head in bed last night and had kinda thought thats probably what it meant (the querystring...well, its querying a string isn't it!), what with my ASP book helping too...

Thanks for the help!

**Shad** · 23-11-2003, 09:06 PM

Sounds like you've already got a book, but 'Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0' by Wrox is an excellent place to start if you need another

**Mart** · 23-11-2003, 10:37 PM

Glad to hear you figured it out.

Shad, I have a collection of bearded freaks on my bookshelf too

Mart

**daverobev** · 23-11-2003, 11:57 PM

What have I got for reading at the moment, hmm..

ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner by John Gosney

Absolute Beginners Guide to C 2nd ed. by Perry

HTML for the World Wide Web 5th ed by Castro

Linux: The Complete Reference: 4th ed

and some Visual FoxPro book at work.

Well, it'll give me something to read over christmas, right??

**Mart** · 24-11-2003, 12:24 AM

The MSDN website is also a mine of information msdn.microsoft.com.

ASP Objects + methods reference:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...tm/ref_asp.asp

**Rythmic** · 24-11-2003, 09:56 AM

Absolute essential is Microsofts Platform SDK:

http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/...sdk/sdkupdate/

Everything you need to know about MS products (except certain servers such as SQL and Exchange that have their own documentation)

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