>I want to be able to program a VFP form to access an FTP site. I obtained the evaluation FPT control from Mabry to allow my form to download selected files from an FTP server. However, when I unpacked it, I soon realised that the control only appears to deal with an FTP server you are already connected to. As I have done "diddly" with Internet stuff, I had no idea how to get to an FTP site other than some form of other class/control to allow my app to navigate to the FTP site first, and then download files with the Mabry FTP control second.
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Rick's wwIPStuff does this. It now comes with a FTP class that gives you a lot more power than the older version over file trnswer and such...


>The other thing I wish to do is allow my VFP app at the remote site(s) to use the Internet to connect to Head Office and pass a data set to our central quotation engine, wait while the quotation engine processes the data and hand back the result to the remote application, and then the remote application disconnects. Therefore, I want to use the Internet as a "network" and get the necessary software to allow the communication between the "client" and "server". For this, Mabry recommended their SocketX control. I have no idea how either controls work but the ability to get to the FTP server was the starting block.


The FTP stuff should be simple. "Connecting" to a server application and sending and retreiving data get a little bit more involved. How you approach this really depends on the extent that you need to communicate with the server. Possibly the simplest method would be to use a file-based communication scheme where the server polls for a "request" file with a pre-agreed name, processes the file and sends back another file with the results. This couls all be accomplishd via polling and FTP.

If the application really needs to scale and have room to expand easily, you might want to look at setting up a web server using any one of a number of frameworks (I highly recommend west-wind). Even though the server needs not serve a single HTML page, you can use it to handle requests in the form of URL and form variables, and have the client just wait on the processing results. I am doing this at a couple of sights.

There are plenty of other options too- DCOM serving up ADO recordsets would be a good route.

You can even use native NT capability to map a drive from the client machine to a share on the server, and have the client machine place and read files on the remote server as if it were local.

>I naturally assumed that West-Wind would be the first place to start due to the close ties with VFP and the fact that I often see Rick's contributions here and in the FPA. As I really want to make my main application able to use the I*Net as a "network" (having a VFP fat client app at the remote site accessing the main site via the I*Net), West-Wind was my first port of call, before Mabry.
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Rick has written a few tools that make this really easy. I don't know anything about the Mabry controls, but I am confident that whatver you get will be low level communication tools, whereas the software you get with web-connection encapsulates a TON of stuff for you, and makes your job very easy.


>I directly e-mailed Rick and waited a couple of weeks with no answer. I then posted a message to Rick on the Web Connection support page asking whether he had received my e-mail. Again no answer. Therefore, I am just not sure about West-Wind after the lack of response, unless I tried to make "pre-sales" contact in the wrong way. West-Wind initially seemed the obvious choice. As I am so new to Web development with VFP, I am prepared to be completely lead by an expert/guru and pay for a VFP/Internet toolkit appropriate to my requirement.
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Support from West Wind is a little inconsistent- I have gotten my few questions answered quickly, but I have seen other questions on the board go unanswered. Rick is a VERY busy man (not trying to make excuses for him, just telling it like it is), and I'm sure he gets a TON of e-mails asking him the same questoins over and over. I will say that the documentation for his stuff is better than that of any other 3rd party product I have ever worked with, and 98% of the time, any questions you might have could have been answered by RTFM.