Tutorial

HSP Now supports HTTP file downloads

You can now specify a HTTP URL within the HSP URL.  For example, using this URL would download the file before running it:

x-hsp://www.sco.com/catalog.hsp

Server object and Session Variables Collection now available from outside the scope of IE

The ASP Server object is designed to be a general purpose utility object. We have extended it, adding many Windows-centric methods and made it available to your programs outside the scope of HSP. Now you can access both the Server object and the Session Variable collection from your programs that embed the Internet Explorer ActiveX control (IEX). The Server object is implemented as a "static" or "singleton" object and is now available outside the scope of Internet Explorer. This allows you to access the Server object within programs that embed IEX controls for the purpose of "injecting" objects and values into the HSP environment to be available to your ASP pages.

As an example, suppose you have an application that embeds IEX controls and uses HSP. And suppose that your application uses and database and you keep a persistent ADO connection in a global variable to be used throughout your program. Rather than having to create new, separate ADO Connection objects in your ASP pages every time they run, you can inject the program's ADO object into the HSP scope via the Server object's SessionVar property. This is actually the same "Session Variables" collection you access via the Session object in your ASP pages.

Example. In your VB code, you have a global ADO Connection object named "g_dbCnn", and an embedded IEX control named "ieUserGroup". Here's how you would use this feature.

Now the ADO Connection object is available in your ASP pages in the "Session Variables" collection until you remove it. Here is an example of accessing it:

To remove it from the collection you can either trap the Internet Explorer (or WOW control) OnDocumentComplete event in your application code, or you can do it in your ASP code when finished with it in your cleanup code, as follows.

Of course, you can use this tech with any type of object: Longs, strings or any COM objects.  But you cannot use VB clas objects with this mechanism because HSP/IE is multi-threading and VB doesn't work in such environments.

Server Events

Its often desirable to be able to call methods in a containing application.  If you are hosting the WOW or IE WebBrowser component in your application and running ASP page with HSP, you may want to call into your application code from script on an ASP page.  We have provided a mechanism to do this that works in all environments, including Visual Basic.

We have added an events interface to the Server object, so that you can call Server.RaiseEvent in your script code and receive an event in your application code. To do this you use the Server object WithEvents in your VB code, and use Server.RaiseEvent in your script code. Here is the COM signature of the RaiseEvent event:

    HRESULT OnRaiseEvent( [in] BSTR strEvent, [in] VARIANT vtParam1, [in] VARIANT vtParam2, [in,out] VARIANT *pvtRet )

So, in your script code you call it like this:

    Dim retVal
    Server.RaiseEvent "myEvent1", "param 1", "param 2", retVal

The first parameter is your the event identifier. This is how your VB code can know which event is being raised. The next two are optional paramters for the event. And you can pass an "out" parameter in the last param if you want to get a return value.

In your VB code you declare a HSP.Server object

    Private WithEvents HSPServer As HSP.Server

In your code you create the object then you must call Server.InitEvents

    Set HSPServer = New HSP.Server
    HSPServer.InitEvents

Then you bind to the Event and handle it according to your needs.

    Private Sub HSPServer_OnRaiseEvent(ByVal strEvent As String, ByVal vtParam1 As Variant, ByVal vtParam2 As Variant, pvtRet As Variant)
        if strEvent = "myEvent1" then
            pvtRet = "myEvent1 called"
        end if
    End Sub

Besides this cool feature, we have added many new Windows-specific utility functions to the Server object. Here is a list of some of the methods and properties of the Server Object.

Methods:

URLEncode
MapPath
MapExternalPath
CreateObject
GetregValue
SetregValue
GetWindowsPath
GetEnv
DeleteRegValue
DeleteRegKey
ReadIniFileString
ReadIniFileLong
ReadIniFileSection
WriteIniFileString
WriteIniFileLong
WriteIniFileSection

Properties: