HTTP Download Icon

HTTP Download Action

Declaration

<AMHTTPDOWNLOAD URL="text" FILENAME="text" OVERWRITE="yes/no" RESULTVARIABLE="text" PORT="number" TIMEOUT="number" USERNAME="text" PASSWORD="text" PROXYTYPE="text [options]" PROXYSERVER="text" PROXYPORT="text" PROXYUSERNAME="text" PROXYPASSWORD="text">

See Also

Open Web Page, Send Email, Dial Up, Ping, HTTP Post

Description

Downloads a file using the HTTP protocol from the specified URL (example: http://www.unisyn.com/index.htm) optionally populating a variable with the text contents of the file.

Practical Usage

Useful when data or a file must be downloaded via the HTTP protocol and HTML does not need to be rendered inside an external browser. File data can be saved to a file and put into a variable for further processing.

Parameters

General Tab

URL
Text, Required
MARKUP: URL="http://www.unisyn.com/index.htm"

Specifies a URL (uniform resource locator) which points to a file at a valid address. The file at the specified address will be downloaded.

Filename
Text, Required
MARKUP: FILENAME="c:\downloadedfile.htm"

Specifies a valid path and filename to save the file that is downloaded.

Overwrite
Text, yes/no default=yes
MARKUP: OVERWRITE="YES"

Specifies a valid path and filename to save the file that is downloaded.

Variable
Text, Optional
MARKUP: RESULTVARIABLE="varname"

Specifies the variable to populate with the data from the downloaded file.

Advanced Tab

Port
Number, Optional default=80
MARKUP: PORT="3333"

Specifies the port that should be used when attempting to connect to the HTTP server. The default value is 80 as most servers use this port.  

Timeout (in seconds)
Number, Optional default=10
MARKUP: TIMEOUT="50"

Specifies the maximum time in seconds that the step should wait for a response from the HTTP server before giving up. It may be useful to increase this value when retrieving extremely large amounts of data or if waiting for a long transaction to complete.

Username
Text, Optional
MARKUP: USERNAME="johndoe"

Causes an attempt authenticate with the server first. Specifies the user name to be used during the authentication.

Password
Text, Optional
MARKUP: PASSWORD="mypassword"

Causes an attempt authenticate with the server first. Specifies the password to be used during the authentication.  If created in visual mode, this value is automatically encrypted.

Proxy Tab

Proxy Type
Text [options], Optional - Default (none)
MARKUP: PROXYTYPE="Socks5"

Specifies proxy protocol that should be used.  If you are unsure of the value to use in this parameter, contact your network administrator.

Available Options Are:

System Default (default, recommended) - The settings specified in the Task Administrator preferences are used.
None - Explicitly instructs the action not to use a proxy server regardless of the system default
Socks 4 - Instructs the action to go through a Socks 4 compliant server
Socks 4a - Instructs the action to go through a Socks 4a compliant server
Socks 5 - Instructs the action to go through a Socks 5 compliant server

Note:  To create the most portable tasks it is best to specify "system default" and specify proxy settings in the Preferences of the Task Administrator (Proxy Tab).  By proceeding this way, tasks created in one environment that may have a proxy server will be portable to others that do not - and vice-versa.

Proxy Port
Number, Optional - Default 1028
MARKUP: PROXYPORT="3000"

Specifies the port that should be used to connect to the proxy server. Most proxy servers operate on port 1028 (the default) however the proxy server can be customized to operate on other ports

Proxy Host
Text, Optional - Default (blank)
MARKUP: PROXYSERVER="proxy.host.com"

Specifies the hostname (server.domain.com) or IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) of the proxy server.

User Name (Proxy)
Text, Optional - Default (none)
MARKUP: PROXYUSERNAME="username"

Specifies the username that should be used to authenticate when connecting through the proxy server. This option is only valid when Socks 5 is specified in the Proxy type as it is the only version that supports authentication.

Password (Proxy)
Text, Optional - Default (none)
MARKUP: PROXYPASSWORD="encrypted"

Specifies the password that should be used to authenticate when connecting through the proxy server. When the step is created using the Task Builder it is written to the task encrypted. This option is only valid when Socks 5 is specified in the Proxy type as it is the only version that supports authentication.

Notes

Standard Error Handling Options
This action also includes the standard "Error Causes" and "On Error" failure handling options/tabs

More on Error Handling Options

Variables and Expressions
All text fields allow the use of expressions by surrounding the expression in percentage signs (example: %MYVARIABLE%, %Left('Text',2)%). To help construct these expressions, a popup expression builder is available in all these fields by pressing F2.
More on variables...

More on expressions...

More on the expression builder...

Example

<AMHTTPDOWNLOAD URL="http://www.unisyn.com/index.htm" FILENAME="c:\index.htm" OVERWRITE="NO" RESULTVARIABLE="myvarname">