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Read textfile from internet
Posted: February 3rd, 2006, 9:25 pm
by jeroenbos
Posted: February 3rd, 2006, 9:30 pm
by limbo
Which plugin do you mean?
Did you tried the "$File" or the "$Rss" Commands?
Posted: February 3rd, 2006, 9:31 pm
by jeroenbos
$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.
Posted: February 4th, 2006, 6:38 pm
by limbo
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.
Posted: February 7th, 2006, 10:16 pm
by CoolTek
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.
Posted: February 8th, 2006, 10:13 pm
by ReverseEngineered
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.
Posted: February 9th, 2006, 1:16 am
by jonny
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.
Posted: February 22nd, 2006, 10:40 pm
by krisp
I released a plugin based on this post in the Plugin Announcement forums.