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Huhtaman · Guest

Hello All:

We use Indy in our apps with great success to FTP files from our website
into our clients server with great success. Each client has their own
private work area on our website.

We want to extend this functionality further in 2 ways:

1) When a file has been loaded on our website for a client, we want our
app at the client's network to alert them that a file is available.

2) We want to be able to send a message to our client ( kind of like a 1
way instant message ) - if we could do 2 way - that would be way cool.

What would be the best way to accomplish these 2 goals ???

For #1, should we create some kind of process that periodically checks
the web sites for available updates on a background thread ???

For #2, should we do the same ???, or, is there a way to set up a
private messaging session with some of the Indy components ??? Is there a
good demo on this ???

Any ideas would be appreciated. We are trying to make our clients lives
easier and to increase our own efficiency. Thank you.

Neil Huhta

Remy Lebeau (TeamB) · Guest

"Huhtaman" <nhuhta (AT) digital (DOT) net> wrote

Huhtaman · Guest

Remy:

My website is organized as follows:

customers (dir)
JoeSmithMotors (dir for specific customer )
rpts ( dir for new reports )
patch ( dir for minor update specific to customer
msg ( proposed dir for messages to be sent to
customer )
HowardsUsedCars
rpts
patch
msg
.....

In the above structure, we will produce a new report for the customer,
then use our client FTP tool to upload it into the
customersJoeSmithMotorsrpts directory on our website.

Next, we must call JoeSmithMotors & tell them that the report is
installed. Then, JoeSmithMotors clicks a button in our app which launches an
FTP client that pulls in the report.

If we had some kind of mechanism where the app running at JoeSmithMotors
became aware that the report was available, we could avoid having to make
the phone call and the app would either launch the FTP client, or, simply
pop up a message.

We DO NOT want to write a Web server app for our website. It is Linux
and we have not experience basis. We want to keep it simple.

Here are my ideas:

1) We could build a process into the JoeSmithMotors app so that it logs
into the website periodically and checks for new report files. If the report
files are there, then the app would place a conspicuous message alerting the
user that the reports are available ( kind of a simple version of Microsoft
Automatic Updates for WindowsXP ).

My only concern is that this seems a little bit wastefull of resources

2) Is there some way for us to automatically broadcast a message to the
customer when we load the forms up on the website - I know that sockets
controls can be placed in "listen" mode - but I don't know how they work -
do they require unique TCP/IP addresses ??? Or, could we distinguish each
customer somehow - would each customer need a static IP address ???

3) We may want to send some type of short message to a customer once in
a while - such as alerting them to a new feature or some other detail.
Option 1 would work if we placed a file with the message in JoeSmithMotors
msg directory - the app could detect the file & display it to the customer.

If the process were embedded in the app, I'd want to put it in a
seperate thread & allow each workstation to toggle this "messaging" process
on & off.

Please let me know what you think.

Thank you.

Neil Huhta

Remy Lebeau (TeamB) · Guest

"Huhtaman" <nhuhta (AT) digital (DOT) net> wrote