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TURL_Post (function reference)

By October 1, 2021October 13th, 2021Online Help, Troi URL plug-in
Troi URL Plug-in for FileMaker Pro

TURL_Post

Sends data to the server, using the POST method, and returns the result as raw data.

SyntaxFunction badge

TURL_Post ( switches ; theURL ; theData )

Parameters

switches this determines the behaviour of the plug-in
theURL the url of the server
theData the data to be sent with the POST method

Switches

Switches can be one or more of these:

-TimeoutTicks=x specify the connect timeout time in x ticks (1/60th of a second)
-ReturnHeader include the header in the returned text (at the beginning)
-ReturnDataAfterError return the error code followed by the data
-Portnumber=y specify the port number to use
-NotEncoded send the post data without any normal encoding for "www-form-urlencoded"
-DontAutoRedirect the plug-in will not go to a redirected page but return the original page
-AllowAnyRootCertificate (for HTTPS) allow root certificates from unrecognized certification authorities. Note that this is less secure
-ExtraCRLFafterData an extra CRLF (carriage return and line feed) character is added at the end of the Post data
-AlwaysSendUserPassword will directly send the username + password, even when this might not be necessary
-DontTryWithUserPassword don’t send username + password when the web server requests authorization
-Encoding=ISO_8859_1 encodes the data in ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1)
-Encoding=UTF8 encodes the data in UTF-8, and also the resulting data
-DontDetectEncoding disable automatic UTF-8 encoding detection, instead keep the native encoding
-NoDialog (obsolete) don’t display a progress dialog

Returned Result

Data type returned

Text

Result

If successful it returns the data of the URL. If unsuccessful it returns an error code starting with $$ and the error code. Returned error codes can be:

$$-1 user cancelled
$$-4230 the connection timed out
$$-3242 this protocol is not supported (use only http and https)
$$-30776 authentication error, you need to supply a correct user name and password
$$-92 servername part of the url is too long
$$-2110 path part of the url is too long

Other errors may be returned, specifically errors in the range 300 to 599, which are HTTP Status Codes.

Originated in

Troi URL Plug-in 1.2

Compatibility

FileMaker Pro 16 to 19

Considerations

Secure connections (HTTPS) using SSL are also supported on Windows and macOS.
If you don’t specify a timeout, a default timeout of 15 seconds is used.
See the user guide section “How to make sense of a web form”, to determine what you must send to make the form work.

The length of the URL is limited, by both the plug-in and receiving servers. A lot of web servers don’t support URLs longer than 2048 characters. Note that the plug-in has higher limits of 32867 characters for the URL. The 3rd parameter “theData” has a limit of about a half GB of characters.
On macOS you might need to set cookies to get the desired result. See the TURL_SetCookies function.
See also TURL_SetCustomHeader for special headers, that may be needed, for example in a form.

The plug-in can automatically detect UTF-8 encoded web pages (and encode them correctly). This is enabled by default, and is determined by looking for the meta and charset tag in the HTML result of the TURL_Post function. For an XML result the “encoding=utf-8” tag will also be detected.

Note that starting with v6.0 the plug-in no longer shows a progress dialog on nacOS.

Example

TURL_Post ( "-unused" ; "http://www.idninc.com/cgi-bin/sherlock.cgi" ; "name=troi" )

This will send the form data “name=troi” for the Sherlock form “cgi-bin/sherlock.cgi” to the server www.idninc.com and return the result. This will return something similar to:

    <HTML>
    <HEAD><TITLE>COMPANY SEARCH</TITLE></HEAD>
    <body><CENTER><!--BANNER_START--><A HREF="http://www.BestSiteFirst.com">
    <IMG SRC="http://www.idninc.com/images/banner.gif" border=0></A>
    <!--BANNER_END-->
    ...
    <!--SEARCH_RESULTS_START-->
    <P> <!--RELEVANCE-->100<!--END_RELEVANCE-->
    % <A HREF="https://www.troi.com">Troi Automatisering: For FileMaker Pro plug-ins</A>
    <UL>Check out the latest FileMaker Pro Plug-ins from Troi Automatisering.  </UL></P>
    ...
    <!--SEARCH_RESULTS_END-->
    </UL></BODY>
    </HTML>

Example 2

We assume that in your FileMaker file the following fields are defined:

theURL		       	Text
gTimeOutTime         	Global, number

theURL should contain the URL, for example “http://www.filemaker.com”. In a script add the following script steps:

Set Field [ formData ; "name=troi&number=123456" ]
Set Field [ resultText ; TURL_Post ( "-TimeoutTicks=" & gTimeOutTime ; theURL ; formData ) ]

This will post the form data to the URL specified and return the result as raw HTML data. If the server does not react the function will timeout after gTimeOutTime ticks and an error code of “$$-4230” will be returned.

Related functionsFunction badge

TURL_Get
TURL_SetCookies
TURL_SetCustomHeader
TURL_SetProxy

Related topics

Troi URL Plug-in online help (overview)


Online Help Page for Troi URL Plug-in for 16 to 19 –> TURL_Post (urlp4401) 2021-1013 16:30:17