thanks, I’ll experiment with that on the weekend.

Mark

This is the first time I’ve tried to post information where I wanted the format maintained. I’ll remember that “Link” button in the future. Thanks for your assistance.

Moderator, you can delete my posts #20 and #22 if you want to clean up the clutter.

Easy way to do links, btw, is to simply type in the phrase you want to represent the hyperlink, then select it and click on the Link Quicktag above the comment window. A winder will pop up requesting you to enter a URL, which you can edit as you like (it defaults with http:// on the line). I never can manage to get the text entered properly any other way.

Mark

4) Under the Session option tree, set the following options:
* Set the Host Name to http://www.nws.noaa.gov

Here is how the HTTP request / response (hand shake) works with a working example:

On a raw socket connection to port 80 of the web server the browser sends the following “GET” request:

GET /{web page URL with parameters} HTTP/1.0{CR/LF}Host:{the IP address of your computer}{CR/LF}Connection: Close{CR/LF}{CR/LF}

For example, to request storm data from NOAA’s web server, send the following HTTP request:

GET /www.nws.noaa.gov/view/national.php?prod=HUR HTTP/1.0{CR/LF}Host: 10.10.1.10{CR/LF}Connection: Close{CR/LF}{CR/LF}

In the above example, the host address of 10.10.1.10 is my computer NIC’s IP address. You would need to substitute your computer’s IP address here. Notice also that the question mark “?” tells the web server that the following text are the parameter assignments. In this case, “prod” is the parameter name and “HUR” is the parameter value. If there is more than one parameter, each parameter will need to be separated with a “&”. For example, ?prod=HUR&time=1045.

I’m representing a carriage return (ASCII 13) and Linefeed (ASCII 10) as {CR/LF). At the end of the GET request, you send two sequences of a carriage return and line feed to tell the web server that the get request is completed. If the resource requested is available, the response data will be returned to you in whatever format the CGI application formats it in. Once the response has been fully sent, the web server then forces the connection closed (dropping the connection). To send another request, you must repeat the above sequence, substituting the web page URL and parameters as needed.

If you use Putty as a test tool, you can manually interact with the web server and save the response data to file. Here is the full set of configuration settings to make a working GET request from NOAA using Putty, saving the entire session dialog (with response data) to file for your analysis:

1) Using a text editor, copy and paste the above example into the editor. Where I use a {CR/LF}, make that a new line in the editor. For example:

———–[Editor Text Window]————
1: GET /www.nws.noaa.gov/view/national.php?prod=HUR HTTP/1.0
2: Host: 10.10.1.10
3: Connection: Close
4:
5:
6:
——————————————
Note: Make sure lines 4 through 6 exist because they represent the sequence of two carriage return and line feeds terminating the request.

2) Now highlight lines 1 through 5 above and copy them to your clipboard
3) Run the Putty application
4) Under the Session option tree, set the following options:
     * Set the Host Name to http://www.nws.noaa.gov
     * Set the protocol to “Raw”
     * Set the Port number to 80 (the standard HTTP protocol port)
     * Set the “Close window on exit” to “Never”
5) Under the Session > Logging tree, set the following options:
     * Set “Session Logging” to “Log all session output”
     * Set “Log file name” to what ever path and file name you want to use.
6) Now, click on the open button
7) In the session window, paste the lines copied from your editor (from step 2 above) into the session window.
8) If the above is done correctly, the server will return the data and close the connection. You can view the data by inspecting the log file created in step #5 above.

Hope this helps. Let me know if there is anything that needs more explaining.

Hank