Ruby and C# code to upload a file to a server that uses FrontPage extensions

I ran into a challenge last week. I had to write a script or program that creates an RSS file and upload it to a IIS server. The program would be be scheduled to run every so often. The IIS server did not supported DAV, but it supported Front Page Extensions 2002. I looked everywhere in the web for sample code on how to upload files to such servers. I found out that MS Internet Publishing is the technology used by Front Page Extensions. I also found out that there was an OLE provider for it and that I could connect to it using classic ADO 2.5. I tried the example provided in Microsoft site, but the code crashed when the ADODB.Stream object opened the stream from the record. The error said something about “Interface not supported” and “InvalidCast”.

My old ASP 3.0 book has a sample of writing directly to the ADODB.Stream, so I tried that and it worked but it kept prompting a dialog asking for the username and password even though I had passed those in the Stream’s open method. To solve the dialog problem, I connected using the ADODB.record (passing the username and password to its open method) and then opening the stream straight from the url. The following are two working sample codes that will upload a file to a server that supports Front Page extensions:

[Both samples are released under the MIT license]

Ruby code:

require 'win32ole'

#Reads the contents of a local file and writes its
# contents into a remote file pointed by remote_url.
# The remote file must be hosted on a server that suppots
# FrontPage Extensions. This methos uses the MS Internet
# Publishing OLE DB provider through ADO.
# Please note that remote_url will be overwritten, DO
# NOT point remote_url to a folder.
def upload_file(local_file_path, remote_url,
 username, password)
 #the connection must be established first by using
 # ADODB.Record
 grec = WIN32OLE.new('ADODB.Record')
 grec.Open("",
 "URL=#{remote_url}" , 3, 67108864, 16384,
 username,
 password)
 
 #Get the contents from the file
 contents = File.open(local_file_path, "r").read
 
 #Write the contents into the remote file
 objStream = WIN32OLE.new('ADODB.Stream')
 objStream.Open("URL=#{remote_url}", 3,
               -1, username,
               password)
 objStream.Type = 2
 objStream.Position = 0
 objStream.SetEOS()
 #Very important to set when writing rss or xml
 # files with encoding attribute set to UTF-8
   objStream.Charset = "ascii"
 objStream.WriteText(contents, 0)
   
 #close connections
 objStream.close()
 grec.Close()
         
end

 Sample call:

upload_file("folder_in_your_computer/news.xml", 
 "http://server.com/news/news.xml" , "myusername", "paswwrd")

C# code (you must add the ADO 2.5 COM reference to your project, I also did not include the code to get the text from a file, I leave that as an exercise to the reader ;) ) :

static void UploadFile(string url, string username,
           string password)
       {
           //You must connect first to the record to supply
           // the username and password, otherwise it will
           // prompt a login dialog when calling Stream's Open
           ADODB.Record grec = new ADODB.Record();
           grec.Open("",
      url, ADODB.ConnectModeEnum.adModeReadWrite,
      ADODB.RecordCreateOptionsEnum.adCreateOverwrite,
      ADODB.RecordOpenOptionsEnum.adDelayFetchStream,
      username,
      password);

           //Use ADODB.Stream to write the contents of the remote
           // file
           ADODB.Stream objStream = new ADODB.Stream();
           objStream.Open(url, ADODB.ConnectModeEnum.adModeReadWrite,
               ADODB.StreamOpenOptionsEnum.adOpenStreamUnspecified,
               username,
               password);
           objStream.Type = ADODB.StreamTypeEnum.adTypeText;
           objStream.Position = 0;
           objStream.SetEOS();
           objStream.Charset = "ascii";
           objStream.WriteText("I just changed it from c#",
               ADODB.StreamWriteEnum.adWriteLine);


           //close connections
           objStream.Close();
           grec.Close();

       }