Hi,

You have two ways you can pass information back to the user:

1) the return status of the form: it is in the HTTP header sent to you
        as a reply to the GET/PUT/POST/HEAD etc. request.
        it is the second word on the firstline of a reply.

        Like: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
        or: HTTP/1.1 401 Authorisation required

2) in the contents of a page. And that has to be strictly defined
        to be of use.

3) You can use a form as a reply (#2) and add some (hidden) fields on it
        then you have some means of HTML structured answers.

For the number 2 and 3 to work you need control over (part of) the page
that is sent to the user as a reply.

For the number 1 option you need control over the CGI-scripts as they should
return
some statuscode (That is within specs of HTTP).

The HTTP Protocol & HTML Langage were defined for human use.....
and now we are trying to automate talking to an interface designed
for humans, free layout, free text (free everything ;-).
Personaly I believe it will become a nightmare in this way.

Do you have a posibility to define some other protocol (you can use SSL
even then) and handle transaction without the (in this case) hassle of
HTTP & HTML. In other words, Roll-Your-Own.
Then you are in total control.

(Are you the designer/builder of the interface or the victim of
an existing interface that is fed to/forced upon you)

I Hope this helps,

Nico Baggus

>-----Original Message-----
>From: curl_at_contactor.se
>Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 11:55 AM
>To: curl_at_contactor.se
>Subject: Re: problems on communicating with a banks server
>
>
>Hi Nico
>
>Is there any way I can check for some kind of code from the
>banks' server to
>see whether the process was successfull?. As I've said,
>checking for a text
>string like "The account nr is not the required length" is not
>the best of
>ways to check for feedback.
>Thanks
>Tim
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Nico Baggus" <nico_baggus_at_compuserve.com>
>To: <curl_at_contactor.se>
>Sent: 08 August 2000 12:34
>Subject: RE: problems on communicating with a banks server
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have more or less the same problem.
>> The processing of a post might invoke timeouts if
>> responces are kept waiting too long.
>> So I have to start to report a page with 200 back
>> to tell something was correctly received.
>> Later on I use some strict codes
>> like
>> ==>OK and
>> ==>ERRORS and
>> ==>WARNINGS
>> followed by ---<original text lines>
>>
>> if something happens.
>>
>> These come in <PRE> </PRE> blocks....
>> (so no special HTML layout is needed to send error messages.
>(In this case
>> I'm on the Publishers side of things).
>>
>> Just waiting for all processing to complete and answer
>> the final status as a 200 or different HTTP error code might
>just take too
>> long. (as it is about uploading & processing files).
>>
>> This ==> and --- signaling is done by the CGI
>> processing around the uploads, and "applications" are
>> generaly ignorant about being run within the
>> cgi script. (The can also be run from a commandline
>> if needed.)
>>
>>
>> regards,
>> Nico Baggus
>>
>>
>
>

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Received on 2000-08-08