a supplier of mine delivers his price list with a link like this:
http://www.example.com/report?cad1=104516005&cad2=da97172291f241855399358471275b38
If using a browser, you go to this address, the server generates a excel report on the fly and a "Save as..." dialog appears so you can download it, like this:
I was told to make a cron job, so the file would be transfered to my server automatically every day, and I really don't know if that's even posible.
I tried using java's HttpURLConnection, but I get a "503 Forbidden" message when I try to connect to that URL, plus, the file itself doesn't really exist on the server, and if it exists, I don't know the location of the file.
I also tried using linux wget, but it returns the html from this address (http://www.example.com/report) instead of the excel file that is generated.
Is there a way to do this using java or any other thing that can be executed as a cron job?
I no longer need an answer for this. The requirements changed.
I'm answering the question since I cannot delete it.
Related
I have learned coding in JAVA for the sole purpose of creating a task manager where I can create tasks and keep all my files, phone calls and emails for the specific task in one place, or rather easily accessible from within the task. I have had success with all requirements but for the email. What I want to achieve is to have a "link" in my java program to a specific email in the PST file and when the link/button is clicked the email must be opened and viewed in Outlook.
I have tried Javamail and I can successfully access emails from the server - however I get too many emails per day and have to delete all emails from the server twice daily. The PST file seems like the best solution - it already has all the information I need without creating duplicates.
I have tried libpst and I can access all of my emails in the PST file with success. However, I cannot seem to pick one email and have it open in Outlook. Since I will use this program only to make my job easier I would prefer not to have to buy any "connectors" and the like - I could just as well then buy a program like this and where is the fun in that?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Did you look into using the Outlook Object Model? COM libraries can be accessed in Java using Jacob. To open a message in Outlook by its entry id, use Application.Session.GetItemFromID.
I am not sure if this would work since I havent used the libpst library. Can you export a single email message as a .eml or .msg file? If you can, then you can open the file using outlook easily enough.
This snippet should help
Desktop desktop=Desktop.getDesktop();
desktop.open(<.eml/.msg file>);
Also, take a look the switches available to open outlook from the command prompt.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-help/command-line-switches-HP001003110.aspx
It is quite a common question but I can't find an answer to it
I have a simple HTML with an input text box (type=file) and a submit button. On clicking the submit button, I call a js function where I try to get the complete path of the file
var data = $('#fileName').val();
the issue is I am not getting complete file path of the file I am uploading. I know due to security reasons chrome gives me a C:\fakePath\filename and firefox gives me only the fileName. But in case I need a complete path what shall I do?
PS: Further I will make an ajax call and give that file path to the back-end which needs it to read that file using FileReader
You cannot get the complete path! there is no way to do that!! Even though you are on an intranet and you have enough permissions.
A workaround for this is to have a textarea and ask the user to enter the complete path of the file.
In short you can't have the full name of a file once is loaded on server side, you will just have the file name and its content in a raw byte array (among other attributes). This is not a Java thing nor other server side technologies issue, is related to browser implementation (but it looks that IE6 may contain a flaw about this).
Not directly related to your question but caught my attention
PS: Further I will make an ajax call and give that file path to the back-end which needs it to read that file using FileReader
Usually, you can't handle a file upload using ajax because it can lead to security holes. Still, there are some browsers (like Chrome and Firefox) that allows you to send a file using XMLHttpRequest but that isn't allowed on some browsers (like IE8-) so you have to use an iframe in order to make the file ajax uploading work.
In order to avoid handling all these problems, I would advice you to use a third-party js library that handles the ajax file upload. An example is blueimp jQuery file upload that also has Java server side examples (DISCLAIMER: I do not work in this project nor I'm associated with blueimp in any way). Note that using this plugin requires that you have a mid knowledge on HTML/JavaScript/jQuery/Java Server Side so if you're a starter it may take you some time to make it work, but once it does is pretty good.
I dont know which technology you are using.. but you can always get file name once it is uploaded on server (Using php or .net )
your steps to upload should be like below:
1) Upload file to the server (e.z. /uploadedFiles/...filename
2) Create a method which will fetch file name from the uploaded path
3) simply insert file name in to the database (this will give you flexibility to change folder name of uploaded docs in future if required)
Generally filenames are not stored as it is . to avoid name conflict in future. So it is a advisable to always rename your filename by adding minutes & seconds after itsname.
If any doubts do ask.
Hope it helps.
Browsers block the filepath access on javascript for securit reasons.
The behavior makes sense, because the server doesn't have to know where the user stores the file on his computer, it is irrelevant to the upload process.
for example, I am already at the backend and I have data (List of SomeObject) and I want it to be downloaded (instead of redirecting to a page). I am not really sure how to implement it.
QUESTION:
Am I supposed to create an actual CSV file first (in the server) and let the user download it, (delete after download) or is there a way to let the user download it without making any physical file?
Anyone familiar with cubby? or Java web Actions / ActionResults? I can't seem to get the Request/Response objects in the server actions :/ Thanks.
I am newbie in wkhtmltopdf. I am wondering how to use wkhtmltopdf with my Dynamic Web Project in Eclipse? How to integrate wkhtmltopdf with my Java dynamic web application?
Is there any tutorials available for beginners of wkhtmltopdf ?
(Basically, I would like to use wkhtmltopdf in my web application so that when user click a save button , the current page will be saved to PDF file).
First, a technical note: Because you want to use wkhtmltopdf in a web project, if and when you deploy to a Linux server machine that you access via ssh (i.e. over the network), you will need to either use the patched Qt version, or run an X server, e.g. the dummy X server xvfb. (I don't know what happens if you deploy to a server running an operating system other than Linux.)
Second, it should be really quite simple to use wkhtmltopdf from any language in a web project.
If you just want to save the server-generated version of the current page, i.e. without any changes which might have been made like the user filling on forms, or Javascript adding new DOM elements, you just need to have an extra optional argument like ?generate=pdf on the end of your URL, which will cause that page to be generated as a PDF, and then the PDF button will link to that URL. This may be a lot of work to add to each page manually if you are just using simple JSP or something, but depending on which web framework you are using, the web framework may offer some help to implement the same action on every page, if you need to implement that.
To implement this approach, you would probably want to capture the response by wrapping the response object and overridding its getWriter() and getOutputStream() methods.
Another approach is to have a button "submit and generate PDF" which will generate the next page as a PDF. This might make more sense if you have a form the user needs to fill in - I don't know. It's a design decision really.
A third approach is to use Javascript to upload the current state of the page back to the server, and process that using wkhtmltopdf. This will work on any page. (This can even be used on any site, not just yours, if you make it a bookmarklet. Just an idea that occurred to me - it may not be a good idea.)
A fourth approach is, because wkhtmltopdf can fetch URLs, to pass the URL of your page instead of the contents of the page (which will only work if the request was a HTTP GET, or if it's equivalent to a HTTP GET on the same URL). This has some small amount of overhead over capturing your own response output, but it will probably be negligible. You will also very likely need to copy the cookie(s) into a cookie jar with this approach, since presumably your user might be logged in or have an implicit session.
So as you can see there are quite a lot of choices!
Now, the question remains: when your server has the necessary HTML, from any of the above approaches, how to feed it into wkhtmltopdf? This is pretty simple. You will need to spawn an external process using either Runtime.getRuntime().exec(), or the newer API called ProcessBuilder - see http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.util/from-runtime.exec-to-processbuilder.html for a comparison. If you are smart about it you should be able to do this without needing to create any temporary files.
One of the wkhtmltopdf websites is currently down, but the main README is available here, which explains the command line arguments.
This is merely an outline answer which gives some pointers. If you need more details, let us know what specifically you need to know.
Additional info:
If you do end up trying to call wkhtmltopdf in an external process from java (or for that matter, any language), please note that the "normal" output that you see when using wkhtmltopdf from the command line (i.e. what you would expect to see in STDOUT) is not not in STDOUT but in STDERR. I raised this issue in the project page
http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/issues/detail?id=825
and was replied that this is by design because wkhtmltopdf supports giving the actual pdf output in STDOUT. Please see the link for more details and java code.
java-wkhtmltopdf-wrapper provides an easy API for using wkhtmltopdf in Java.
It also works out-of-the-box on a headless server with xvfb.
E.g., on a Ubuntu or Debian server:
aptitude install wkhtmltopdf xvfb
Then in Java:
Pdf pdf = new Pdf();
pdf.addPage("http://www.google.com", PageType.url);
pdf.saveAs("output.pdf");
See the examples on their Github page for more options.
I am really looking for implementation advice as I have entered a new realm that I am not familiar with.
At the simplest level, I would like to find a way that I can read/write to a users machine from my web server. For this to work, I think I will have to install some sort of "plugin" on the users machine which can receive (or poll?) the server for instructions.
The above is the line of thought that I currently have, maybe using JAVA to do this. This needs to work on Linux, Mac and Windows OS.
I am really looking for advice on the above, is it a good idea? Is there a better way of doing this? Is there something out there already that I can build on top of?
I really appreciate all input and advice as this is something I have not done before.
Thanks all
For Java, you could launch a client application via Java Web Start that will be able to perform a limited set of operations on the file system.
If this is too restrictive, then you would need to provide a link to a download of a client application that would be installed / executed on the user's desktop machine.
I'm assuming you want to read and write specific files on the users' machine that are not normally accessible (i.e. not temp files, or files in a sandbox). And you want to do this from your webserver.
As you looking for cross platform, I'd go with java. Given that your needs are simple (read/write files from remote commands) you could probably target JRE 1.4, which is now many years old, but is installed on ca. 98% of desktops (source).
Here's an overview of how you can approach this:
Create a java applet or Java Web Start application that fetches a list of commands from a URL. The URL can contain any specific identification that you need to identify the machine, such as the users ID (see below for alternatives.)
Your webserver generates the list of commands that the applet should execute - create file, read file, write file and sends these as the response.
Sign the applet/application, so that it can escape the restrictions of the sandbox. To do this, you need to obtain a certificate. More on this later.
Inform and educate your users about what the applet is doing. E.g. a page on your site about why they are being asked to trust your certificate and what the implications are.
You can implement this as an applet or an application, the bulk of the work is pretty much the same. I talk about applet, but remember it applies equally to application.
In more detail:
The applet requests a list of commands from a URL. To hamper attempts at using your applet on another malicious site, you should use HTTPS to fetch the list of commands so that the server is authenticated. The URL should be hard-coded into your applet, so that any attempts to change this will break the signing. How you communicate the commands to the applet via the URL is up to you, e.g. you can use XML or use RMI and simply send over the list of commands as an object.
I mentioned using the userid to identify the machine - using the machine's MAC address is also a possibility. See how to get the mac address of the host.
Once you have the list of commands, your applet executes these using java file I/O apis. See File, FileReader/FileWriter in the javadocs. You include appropriate logging so the applets actions can be audited later if necessary. Once the applet has executed the commands, it sends the result of the commands back to the server, either as a POST operation, or another RMI method call, if you settle on RMI.
If you want to continually send commands from the server, then the applet can poll the URL/invoke the RMI method regularly. A Timer can help with this.
With communciation errors, it will be necessary for the client to request the list of commands more than once. Thus each time you produce a list of commands from the server, it is given an id. The server gives out the same list with the same id until it receives acknowledgement from the applet that the commands have been executed.
To sign the applet, you should obtain an rsa certificate from a certficiate authority. You can self-sign, but then you are opening the door to others modifying your app and impersonating your certificate. Details on obtaining and using certificates are given here.
If you don't know java, then all of this may not make a huge amount of sense, and it's not a trivial project to get started on, particularly considering the implications for your users if your implementation has holes and defects.
It may be wise to exercise caution: although you can do this, doesn't necessarily mean you should. I imagine that most expert users would frown on the use of this app, and would not accept the certificate. And then there is culpability - if your app accidentally deletes a critical file through a bug, misconfiguration, human error etc, how will you be prepared for that?
For the user, a web browser plugin may be the easiest, since the user won't have to manage yet another running application, however it has its limitation such as having to develop a plugin for each browser. In addition, the user would need their browser running.
You could have the user install a desktop application, which they would have to keep running, so installing it as a service might be ideal.
You could also use a plugin as a wedge between the web browser and a desktop application, which is how Flash works.
To really know you will have to answer the "why" question, why do you wan tot do this.
If you are just trying to store some state on the user's machine that you need to have locally then for small things you can fall back on cookies, or for larger needs you can use the new Web Database features in HTML5 http://dev.w3.org/html5/webdatabase/
If you need to access specific files then you are actually going to have to circumvent the security sand boxing that Java does when run on a webpage. I will leave that for others to go into, I don't know how to do it off hand myself.
In my opinion, Applet will be a better solution. I have made one applet which downloads a zip file from the server on client machine into temp folder, extracts the zip file into a directory specified by client (browser user) and then deletes the zip file.
thanks.
The lowest hanging fruit might be to provide WebDAV access through your web server to a given set of files, as this allows the users to see the files as a part of their usual filesystem with all their usual tools. You then do not have to do all that functionality.
Looks like Slide can deploy on Tomcat, and JBoss has ModeShape.
Will that be useful enough?