How to transfer files in intranet.

How to transfer files in intranet.

• Doru Roman

  Any overhead comes with a great number of benefits such as scalability, programmability, security, support, ease of use, etc.  If your greatest concern is performance I would recommend taking a look at what your performance requirements are for your scenario and determine if IIS/HTTP can support your needs.
  
  

  That being said, under the vast majority of scenarios I would recommend against creating a custom socket server for something like file retrieval.  Unless you have very specific and reproducible concerns for going the custom socket server route you might go down the custom socket server route and discover that creating a robust custom protocol to be more work than you really want to sign up for and support long-term. 
  
  HTTP and FTP are well understood, robust, and extremely well-documented protocols for handling the basics of your scenario.  If you find that HTTP would indeed satisfy your scenario then IIS is by far the most robust and best-supported approach; either using a static web share model, WebDAV or something dynamic such as ASP.NET.  If, for some reason, IIS is not allowed on your intranet and your server is Windows 2003 or XP SP2, then you might want to consider the HttpListener class as well. 
  
  HttpListener, also a part of System.Net, allows you to create your own listener for the HTTP protocol without IIS.  This will allow you to effectively create a custom HTTP server without having to reimplement HTTP and with minimal footprint.  Underneath the covers, HttpListener uses our kernel-model HTTP protocol driver, Http.sys.  This is the same driver that IIS uses as well.
  
  Billy Anders

  
  
  

• Thottam R. Sriram

  I don't see why it would not be appropriate.  As Durga notes above, you get a lot for free in this setup.
  
  

• LonW

  Hi Mike.
  
  I am interested in the case that the server is a custom socket server.
  
  Can you provide more information for this case, please
  
  Thank you.
  
  Mircea
  

• Arno Nel

  I currently write a custom socket server, however, the most thing for socket is to make it robust.
  
  If you can share some information on the custom socket server, it would be a big plus.
  
  BTW, which method is preferrable to your opinion, socket server or web server/ftp server, in the scenario of distributed intranet application. This is the ultimost question I am expecting to have an answer.
  
  Thanks very much.
  
  

• Barrie A Kenyon

  Thanks for your reply.
  So far, one of the reason that I adopt socket is I don't want to install IIS in an intranet environment.
  
  Is it approriate to use ASP.Net in an intranet senario, which is mainly for downloading/uploading files and some message passing
  
  
  

• Eric.d

  I have problems with uploading files in IIS server. Could you please give me a hand

  The code was as follow:

  void CMINFODlg::UploadXmlFile()

  {

  //Initialize wininet.

  HINTERNET hInternet = NULL;

  hInternet = InternetOpen("Upload XML File", INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_PRECONFIG, NULL, NULL, 0);

  if (!hInternet)

  {

  return ;

  }

  // Connect to host.

  #ifdef _DEBUG

  PSTR pszHost = "LOCALHOST";

  #else

  PSTR pszHost = "SKYNET";

  #endif

  HINTERNET hConnect = NULL;

  hConnect = InternetConnect

  (

  hInternet, // wininet handle,

  pszHost, // host

  INTERNET_DEFAULT_HTTP_PORT, // port

  "anonymous", // user

  NULL, // pass

  INTERNET_SERVICE_HTTP, // service

  NULL, // flags

  NULL // context

  );

  if(!hConnect)

  {

  return;

  }

  // Get Xml File Name

  CString cstrMachName = GetMachineName(false);

  CString fileNameUpload= _T("/MInfoRpt/Upload/") + cstrMachName + _T(".xml");

  // Open the connection

  HINTERNET hRequest = HttpOpenRequest (hConnect, _T("PUT"),

  fileNameUpload, NULL, NULL, NULL, 0, 0);

  if (!hRequest)

  {

  return ;

  }

  // Get Xml string for sending

  CString xmlString = GetXmlString();

  // Upload to the file

  BOOL bSendOK = HttpSendRequest ( hRequest

  , NULL, 0

  , (LPVOID)xmlString.LockBuffer(), xmlString.GetLength());

  xmlString.UnlockBuffer();

  // Close all the handler and connection

  if(!InternetCloseHandle(hRequest))

  {

  printf( "Error on HttpEndRequest %lu \n", GetLastError());

  return ;

  }

  if(!InternetCloseHandle(hConnect))

  {

  printf( "Error on HttpEndRequest %lu \n", GetLastError());

  return ;

  }

  if(!InternetCloseHandle(hInternet))

  {

  printf( "Error on HttpEndRequest %lu \n", GetLastError());

  return ;

  }

  return;

  }

  The problem is:

  This is C++ code inside win32 application. I need upload xml files to IIS server (intranet). But only the machine login with my name and running this application could update files in that upload folder. The code could not create files, only could overwrite the exist files. And the other machine login with others name could not be upload at all. I trace the log file, the files could reach in IIS server but with 401.02. IIS could not accept that files. I believe you are the expert in this area. I need your help. Hope to see your response soon and thanks

  
  
  

• OCCcoach

  HTTP Server:
  --------------
  Typically the HTTP servers already have the infrastructure to do this.
  http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/fileupload.asp gives you some idea in to how to do this without you having to do much coding yourself.
  Then you could simply write a WebClient code to upload files.
  
  In the case of download, you don't need to do anything special other than to
  simply place the file on the server.
  You can use WebClient to download the file
  
  Socket Server
  --------------
  First you need to have a socket server up and running on port 80  if you plan to
  use the HttpUpload/download
  
  Then for the upload case if you plan to use WebClient / http upload you need to
  handle the HTTP protocol on the server side. [why would you want to do this ]
  
  In the case of download too, you need to handle HTTP and parse the request and stream the response back. [why would you want to do this again ]
  
  Now lets say you don't want to use HTTP and you want to use TCP at the lower level.  In this case you can do anything you want, since there is no protocol.
  The server simply listens for some request, [ you need to create your own protocol :-)] and stream the response.
  
  
  In any case I can't think of why you would want to do anything other than the
  HTTP/ASP.NET solution since most of the stuff is already done for you there.
  
  The case might that this is a cross platform situation. Even in that case
  you can use some http server there and I am sure there are plugins for http file upload spefic to that server
  
  

• Fakhrul Islam

  Perhaps.
  But how much do you care about performance for your file uploads
  If you are hardcore then Socket.SendFile may be a better choice
  but it requires some development on the server side since you are not using HTTP

  
  
  

• Edward van Steenderen

  Check out the Socket.SendFile API... There is async version ofit too
  

• 2162

  What about the performance between these two approaches
  The http approach is not slower than the other one

  
  

• Sunil Pawar

  Can you provide more detail on your scenario.  Is the server a file server with a shared folder, a web server, an FTP server or other
  
  If the server is an HTTP server than I suggest using the class System.Net.HttpWebRequest or WebClient.  The following code example downloads a file from a HTTP server and stores it in a file. 
  
  

  using System; using System.Net; class Test { static void Main(String[] args) {  WebClient client = new WebClient();  //string output = client.DownloadString("http://www.microsoft.com");  //Console.WriteLine(output);      client.DownloadFile(http://www.microsoft.com, "out.html");  Console.WriteLine("Done DownloadFile"); } }

  
  
  However, if the server is a custom socket server, please reply with that fact and I can post additional snippets.

  
  
  

• Paulyz

  1) IIS is mostly comes with the OS. If it is not installed by default, installing is trivial by using add remove programs/and selecting add remove windows components
  
  2) It is ABSOLUTELY appropriate to install IIS on local intranet scenario. The entire MICROSOFT company uses IIS to report status, reports, installs, what have you.
  We use it every second of every day. So it is appropriate
  
  3) I would strongly discourage from using Socket Server.
  Why write code when some one has already done that for you
  if you have too much time, tell me and I have some projects for you

  
  
  
• How to transfer files in intranet.