Read textfile from internet

jeroenbos · Post by **jeroenbos** » February 3rd, 2006, 9:25 pm

A few years ago I've had this wonderfull plugin wich could load some txt form a txt-file on internet. Can someone help me get it back or does someone have something better to load text to my LCD?!

I don't want to use de $RSS because I HATE RSS

Post by **limbo** » February 3rd, 2006, 9:30 pm

Which plugin do you mean?

Did you tried the "$File" or the "$Rss" Commands?

jeroenbos · Post by **jeroenbos** » February 3rd, 2006, 9:31 pm

$file can't read remote files and I can't get it work by using $RSS

The plugin I then used was called inet.dll wich I found on a website. The plugin was loaded with bugs but worked fine for reading remote txt files. But it doesn't work in the new version of smartie.

Post by **limbo** » February 4th, 2006, 6:38 pm

I didn't noticed about the inet.dll at all

However if it's not supported by the current LCD Smartie version you have to wait for a new plugin

I'm trying to find more info on the web about the specific file.

CoolTek · Post by **CoolTek** » February 7th, 2006, 10:16 pm

Hello...

I'm also loking for a way to read txt files from the web.
I've tried $Rss Commands, but didnt seem to work

Hope someone can solve the problem.

ReverseEngineered · February 8th, 2006, 10:13 pm

RSS takes a "text" file from a website and parses the RSS data to get the actual displayed data. In this case, you just want to read a text file without parsing it as if it were RSS. The RSS plugin (and no plugin that I know of) will do this, but it should be a simple matter to create it. One just needs to take the RSS plugin and remove the RSS-parsing code.

I'll look into this next week and see what I can do. This could certainly have many uses: perhaps the target would actually be a CGI script which would return text data to be used for the screen. Could be used for many remote-sensing applications.

A good design idea would be to use this to retrieve data, then build other modules on top of it. This could work in two ways. Either a new plugin could be made which would call the get.dll plugin and then parse its return data, or we could use nested $dll calls in the config (e.g. $dll(parse.dll, $dll(get.dll,...), ...)). Either way, it would make building new plugins much simpler, as plugin developers would not have to implement website access code every time they wanted to support some new format. A design method like this would have made it very easy to fix the lack of HTTPS support in all the HTTP-enabled plugins.

jonny · Post by **jonny** » February 9th, 2006, 1:16 am

I use a program called WGET, which is a command line web scraper. Basically, I set it to download the html, or rss, or whatever other types of files they are, to my local drive. From there, I parse the file (which is just text) with a batch script, then have Smartie grab the data with a combination of "splittitle.dll" and the "file.dll" (in the misc. tab).

I actually use it to get information from my bittorrent program, and GBPVR, which both have web interfaces, so I point WGET at the localhost.

It is pretty intricate, and it has to be triggered with a hotkey, but it works pretty well.

krisp · Post by **krisp** » February 22nd, 2006, 10:40 pm

I released a plugin based on this post in the Plugin Announcement forums.