Mirage Source

Original Author: Unknown


Description: This will be good, i'm sure william did something very similar to this for K2H's "who's online" internet portion of his website. Basically, this reads information, saves it to an HTML file, and automatically updates your site via FTP for you. It does require knowledge of HTML to get it working the way you want, however. Also, there are easier/better ways of doing this, such as using an SQL server. Final Note, FTP isn't the most secure protocol in the world (it sends passwords in plain-text), so if someone wants to revise this tutorial using SSH or something, that'd be awesome.


[Original Post]
Difficulty: Medium 3/5

What this does-

This code will create a Statis.htm file that will display whether the server is up or down. The server will then send the file via FTP to a webserver. It is really easy to customize the file that the server makes to whatever you want, the main purpose of this code is the sending of the file to the webserver.

What you need-

A FTP accessible webserver.

The code-

All of this code is Server side.

First add the following code to the top of any module, I created a new module called modStatis for this code. All of this code must go into the same module!




The last part of this code contains the functions that do the "dirty" work. You'll see what they do in a second.

Now add this to the module



What this code does-


This code get's the current time and gives it a 2:00 PM June 16, 2005 format.


Simple enough, this code uses the number that was passed into Sub SaveStatis to dertermin weather the server is Online, Offline, Or Loading and assigns the color that will be used to display the statis. (For ex, if the server is Online then "Online" will be colored green in the Statis.htm file.


This is used so other programs can easily determine the server's statis



The two most important lines in the statis.htm file, they are the lines that display the server's statis and the time the file was updated.


This is the code that creates the Server.htm file, The file is in HTML format. This may look a little confusing at first, but It's not too bad when you look at it line by line.


You may have noticed that there is a "Loading" statis, this is mainly for the benefit of external programs. This line of code keeps the "Loading" statis from being sent to the webserver, mainly to save on the time it takes for the server to load.

I'll get to this latter.


This line opens an internet connection and saves the handel to "InternetConnection" This handel is required to open the FTP connection, and later close the internet connection.


As long as there is an internet connection this code will make a connection to the FTP server and save the handle to "FTPConnection", this handel is needed so the next bit of code can send the file. And so the FTP connection can be closed.

[size=18px]VERY INPORTANT![/size]

Make shour that you change <FTP SERVER> to the FTP server's URL, <USERNAME> to you'r username, and <PASSWORD> to you'r password.


This bit of code will send the Statis.htm file to the FTP server as long as there is a FTP connection.


This code just cleans up so to speek, It closes the FTP connection and then the internet connection, in that order.

Ok, so now we are left with a sup that will send the server's Online/Offline statis to a FTP server. All that is left is to put in the sub's call's.

Att the very bottom of Sub InitServer() (In modGeneral) add:



At the top add:



And at the very bottom of Sub DestroyServer(), but BEFORE "End" add:



That's about it. If you rember befor I mentioned this bit of code:




If you make a file called "DontUpdateStatis" (no extension) and put it in the server's directory the server won't send the Statis.htm file to the webhost, this is useful during debugging, to save time starting and stopping the server.

I also highly recommend adding the following code to frmServer if is isn't already there (CHECK, it might be there already).



One last thing, if you want to get a file from a FTP server, or if you wan't to delete a file off of a FTP server you can use theas functions: (How they are use I'll leave up to you)



Anyway, I hope this helps.

[/Original Post ]

If you need any help getting this to work or there are any problems with the code, let me know.

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The quality of a man is not measured by how well he treats the knowledgeable and competent, but rather how he treats those less fortunate than himself.

wow, awesome tut dude. I'm deff gonna get this to my game but i got school right now, XD so il add it wen i get home and ill tell you how i did. nice job

Yeah.. its close to what Im doing. Thanks for releasing a unique feature

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I doubt it's going to stay unique for long -_-

This is not the first time that exact code surfaced on these forums. Obsidian put "Original Author: Unknown". I remember this tut because through out the whole thing "Status" is spelled as "Statis". I think the original author may have been Caine or that Grubert fella. *shrugs*

Thanks for posting, been trying to find this tut for ages

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yeah i saw this on the backup forum, i went through and fixed a lot of spelling errors, and stuff. Sorry to kind of rain on your parade though william, it is still a great feature that you added without the use of this code. nicely done

but yeah it's an older tutorial that i thought i should bring back up, since a lot of people were trying to do something like this.

[Edit]
I think i'm going to rewrite this sometime next week and replace FTP with SSH though. I'm not sure what VB has in the neighborhood of SSH controls but atleast you won't have to worry about your site getting compromised (from this)

_________________


The quality of a man is not measured by how well he treats the knowledgeable and competent, but rather how he treats those less fortunate than himself.

Hehe I thought you made it. didnt see the author thing.

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Mm nice code. I converted it to users in 5 minutes or so.
Spiffy! Is it me or does this lag your server 0____o

:: Pando

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Constantly writing to a file?

I'd say.

I'm sure it'd be just as easy to write a seperate program that does this. I guess it'd be more work, but oviously less server stress.

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sql ftw tbh

yeah I dont see why more dont use SQL... its a better way to store data and makes viewing it on a website pretty easy

Plus having multi-server sharing the same account/item/npc info is as easy as 1,2,3 ^_^

Not everyone hosts their own server. And not all hosting companys have SQL automatically set up for their sites. Or maybe they just don't know how to USE it

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The quality of a man is not measured by how well he treats the knowledgeable and competent, but rather how he treats those less fortunate than himself.

Then get a hosting company that does?

Yeah you could have a seperate person to just host the MySQL if you wanted. Plus its pretty simple to set up actually.

Yeah, but some people are pretty lazy and won't do it themselves...

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The quality of a man is not measured by how well he treats the knowledgeable and competent, but rather how he treats those less fortunate than himself.

Yeah for people entirely new to all of this it might not be a good idea but if someone wanted to make a serious game I think it would be the best option... at least better than text files.

I like binary. It runs alot faster than text or ini. Maybe not as fast as mysql, but you stand a higher chance to be hacked with mysql.

MySQL uses more memory. You have a copy of everything in memory for the database, then a copy of everything used in the game in memory for hte game. Essentially for Mirage Source as it is, you would use 2x the memory by using MySQL.

Maybe the slight speed increase is worth it to you...

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Why not try my app, ColorEye, on your Android devlce?
Do you like social gaming? Fight it out in Battle Juice!

I am a professional software developer in Salt Lake City, UT.

But if he wanted that, he shouldn't be trying to have the server update a webpage.

I toyed with a MS 307, it really wasn't worth it, imo. Sure, the server loaded up pretty quick, but other than that, I saw no significant improvement over the binary files I use now.

I suggest you use 303 or MSE1, and add the binary stuff, I'll help you add it, if you need.

*sigh*

You are once again saying that speed is the most important factor when it comes to the server.

Also, why would you see any speed increase when you were the only one online?

The server boots faster, kite.

If speed is the most important thing, by all means use MySQL, as long as you understand that you will be using a lot of memory.

_________________

Why not try my app, ColorEye, on your Android devlce?
Do you like social gaming? Fight it out in Battle Juice!

I am a professional software developer in Salt Lake City, UT.

Dave, did you even read his post?