posting info to a remote server

[garethharvey]

I have a page that processes a request from affiliates, the form processed the info and writes it to our database.

How can I tell the affiliate if the process was successful or not?

Is there something I could write at the end of the process for them to collect?

[DrBunchman]

Hi Gareth,

There are many ways you can communicate with a third party via an automated process. Possibilites include:

1. Sending an e-mail
2. Sending data via ftp
3. Submitting a form to a webpage of the affiliates

Do any of these sound like they may be suitable?

Dr B

[garethharvey]

Thanks Dr B

this is the scenario:

I have a form processor on our server that received the info and then processes it into our database. The affiliates post the info to us from their websites as follows:

DataToSend = "instruct=instruct&quotationnumber="&quotationnumber&"&partnerid="&partnerid

dim xmlhttp 
set xmlhttp = server.Createobject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlhttp.Open "POST","http://www.myserver.co.uk/xmlfeed/instruct.asp",false
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
xmlhttp.send DataToSend		'send data in the form of a query string
Set xmlhttp = nothing

Once this task is completed their page continues to run as normal, but I want to send something back to say if it was successful or not.

So I am looking for maybe another line of code after processing the form that they can read to verify the process has been completed.

[DrBunchman]

Have you considered posting some data back in the same way as they have sent it?

[garethharvey]

Thanks Dr B

Tried a few things but modified the code to:

 dim xmlhttp 
set xmlhttp = server.Createobject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlhttp.Open "POST","http://www.website.co.uk/xmlfeed/instruct.asp",false
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
xmlhttp.send DataToSend	
status = xmlhttp.status 
if err.number <> 0 or status <> 200 then 
if status = 404 then 
			post_instruction="error_404" 
elseif status >= 401 and status < 402 then 
			post_instruction="error_401" 
elseif status >= 500 and status <= 600 then 
			post_instruction="error_500" 
else 
			post_instruction="error" 
end if 
else
	post_instruction="completed" 
end if
	End If
Set xmlhttp = nothing

This then returns an error if the form failed. All sorted now.

[DrBunchman]

OKay Gareth, glad you got it sorted out.

[garethharvey]

Just spotted another problem, the information being posted is:

e.g.

Mr Gareth Harvey

but is getting written to the database as:

MrGarethHarvey

It's stripping out all the spaces? Don't know why

[DrBunchman]

Do you mean the data that you are receiving?

There's probably two places where the spaces are being removed: whilst being passed to your page or while being passed into your database update.

Can you test the recieved data (i.e. response.write it to the page) after it's been received initally and do the same just prior to it being passed into your update statement.

Hopefully you should be able to see where the spaces have been removed.

Dr B

[garethharvey]

The infor is being cleaned prior to sending, so a simple replace " ","+" solved the problem.