Write to text file with javascript on GoDaddy server - javascript

I have tried numerous different codes that I have found here along with the following code below I got from learn.microsoft.com. They all give me the same error though. The error I get is "ActiveXObject is not defined". Can someone please tell me how to fix this issue. How do I define the object or is this yet another problem that is related to my host, GoDaddy?!?!
This is for a Plesk/Windows server hosted by GoDaddy.
This is a link is to just one of the codes from stackoverflow that I have tried: Use JavaScript to write to text file?
Microsoft Code
<script>
var fso, tf;
fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
tf = fso.CreateTextFile("G:\mysite\file.txt", true);
// Write a line with a newline character.
tf.WriteLine("Testing 1, 2, 3.") ;
// Write three newline characters to the file.
tf.WriteBlankLines(3) ;
// Write a line.
tf.Write ("This is a test.");
tf.Close();
</script>

You can't write to a file on the server with client-side JavaScript (if clients could write arbitrary files on servers then Google's homepage would be vandalised every second).
The code you've found could write to the hard disk of the computer the "page" was loaded on, but only if the "page" was an HTA application and not a web page.
The standard way to send data to an HTTP server from JavaScript is to make an HTTP request. You can do this with an Ajax API like fetch.
You then need a server-side program (written in the language of your choice) that will process the request and write to the file (although due to race conditions, you are normally better off using a database than a flat file).

Related

Python Requests PDF Content

I am having trouble finding the answer I need for my situation and hoping that someone may be able to help.
Full disclosure, I am pretty new to Python.
What I am trying to achieve is;
Perform a HTTP POST to download a PDF (with Requests, Python 3).
I want to take the stream and give it Google Drive, which will convert back to a PDF and save the file in the Drive folder.
I am ok with the url file request, but I am receiving UnicodeDecodeError on reading the contents. I have tried several files but the same result.
The limitations I have are that I can't install packages (limited to the couple that are provided) and cannot write the output to a file (read-only fs), as I am using Zapier.
This is the (very) basic code I am using;
import requests
url = 'http://unec.edu.az/application/uploads/2014/12/pdf-sample.pdf'
resp = requests.get(url, stream=True)
resp_bin = (resp.content)
return {'output': resp_bin}
Note that the file is just a random file I found for testing purposes.
Error received is; UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 10: invalid continuation byte
If anyone has a way of making this work without additional packages, that would be great.
Note: I do also have the option of urllib here and alternatively JavaScript (node.js v4.3.2) with fetch.

Can't find server side Perl script

I am running Mopidy on a Raspberry Pi with the latest Raspbian Wheezy.
I am trying to call a server side Perl script from Javascript like this:
var addToPlaylist = function() {
var xmlHttpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlHttpRequest.open("POST", "addToPlaylist.pl?uri=" + encodeURI("testuri") + "&&name=" + encodeURI("testname"), true);
xmlHttpRequest.send();
}
But I get the error:
POST http://192.168.0.10:6680/addToPlaylist.pl?uri=testuri&&name=testname 404 (Not Found)
However, if I navigate my browser to:
http://192.168.0.10:6680/addToPlaylist.pl
I can see the script in plain text.
I have tried moving the file to where Mopidy gets it's Javascript files from and to various other places, and the file has a full set of permissions.
Is this likely to be something Mopidy specific or is this a general web server thing? Obviously I don't want to be able to access the R-Pi's whole file system, so is there somewhere where I need to whitelist what can be seen from the client? I am new to Javascript and Web Servers so I do not know the terminology to search for. Could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks
You need to run something that can run Perl scripts, e.g. Perl Dancer, on another port.

Retrieve text from external HTML/asp page with JavaScript

I am using an external asp page (On the company's server - not related to me beside the fact that I'm using it for my job).
The asp page has one query in it, I'm writing something in it and it gives me some information.
In the information there is a certain line with constant header (let's assume 'HEADER'), I want to build an HTA that pulls the line that contains 'HEADER' to my HTA and display only this line.
I think that this isn't possible without any server interaction, but I'm asking anyway.
Can someone think of a way doing it?
Thanks,
Rotem
You can use an Ajax request to pull data from that page. The javascript page needs to be on the same server as the page you want to pull data from because of cross site scripting prevention in most browsers. Here is a good place to start: http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/ajax_intro.asp
Ok, I made something with JavaScript, using Telnet.
It isn't working for all sites, when I'll be at work I'll check it, but I think this will do the job.
The code:
<script type="text/javascript">
var WshShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
WshShell.Run("telnet -fc:/telnetlog.txt www.google.com 80"); // This will save me the source file + minor junk!
setTimeout("WshShell.SendKeys('GET / HTTP/1.0~~')",1000); // Enter the command it telnet </script>
Thanks for the brainstorming,
Rotem

Embedding Javascript Within an Image File

I've noticed a new trend in distributing potentially unsafe code where people will post an image to a server with a watermark suggesting that they change the filename to have a .HTA file extension.
I realized that .HTA was an HTML Application file, which are implicitly trusted by Microsoft's logic and can contain code to do just about anything web-based. I opened the file with my favourite text editor and to my amazement there was Javascript code within the image file!
jfHe299x4qBICCBRgpbl81xTjwucn9j4s1UVZxe8kwoJcdWnXuVHqpilRRhptKRACMBr5koY8vt6AEttD5xeGTOPCfBoQVjCvblkiGcc4ddlfiZiBPdCVAlelSbvhv9XWcoMIYyGMCbMaGv9YUyFrHZg3ZVx6HnRCgz4CyaA2bU9qn6R3NkmHx0W3uG7SZcHYyPiMN6AnWDGXRztMnxL3sY1s3h9VH1oTL34iYawlaEUDOUscX19pPz89v0rfmlqKTXce16vSZ6JDsy4IC5SktfXdt3m50z2R5BbwuhP5BHJITxvD4dHzL6K4uh9tIc4gYCFnDV
//<script id=thisscript>
var dom1 = ["zip","img","zip","orz","orz","zip","cgi"];
var dom2 = ["bin","dat","bin","tmp","tmp","bin"];
// Global XMLHttp, shell, and file system objects
var request = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
var shell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
var fs = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
There is more garbled image data below the source code as well. This is just a snippet.
I'm very curious to know how they were able to add Javascript code to an image file without corrupting the image file format and making it unviewable. I presented this to some of my co-workers, and they were equally stumped.
My guess is that this is a multipart file of some sort (for which it would be perfectly fine to contain both images and script data), that maybe gets executed straight away (in a local context) because it's treated as a Hypertext Application.
For more info, we would need to see the full actual file.
The problem here is liberal file format tolerances.
The JPG interpreter is forgiving enough to ignore "corrupted" non-image data. That's how you can view a large JPG while it's still downloading. The HTA interpreter is forgiving enough to ignore all the weird "text" at the top of the file and proceed to evaluate the stuff that looks like markup and script below.
There's another post about this curious behavior here:
Can I embed an icon to a .hta file?
In it Alexandre Jasmine suggests embedding an icon in an HTA with this command line:
copy /b icon.ico+source.hta iconapp.hta
The image/script you found could have been created using this technique.
You didn't include the entire script, but what you show looks pretty scary. An HTA script with a web connection, shell and filesystem object can do whatever it wants with your local filesystem then phone home once it's done.

Generate some xml in javascript, prompt user to save it

I'd like to make an XML document in JavaScript then have a save dialog appear.
It's OK if they have to click before the save can occur.
It's *not* OK if I *have* to use IE to achieve this (I don't even need to support it at all). However, Windows is a required platform (so Firefox or Chrome are the preferred browsers if I can only do this in one browser).
It's *not* OK if I need a web server. But conversely, I don't want to require the JavaScript to be run on a local file only, i.e. elevated privileges -- if possible. That is, I'd like to to run locally or on a *static* host. But just locally is OK.
It's OK to have to bend over backwards to do this. The file won't be very big, but internet access might either be there, be spotty or just not be a possibility at all -- see (3).
So far the only ideas I have seen are to save the XML to an iframe and save that document -- but it seems that you can only do this in IE? Also, that I could construct a data URI and place that in a link. My fear here is that it will just open the XML file in the window, rather than prompt the user to save it.
I know that if I require the JavaScript to be local, I can raise privileges and just directly save the file (or hopefully cause a save dialog box to appear). However, I'd much prefer a solution where I do not require raised privileges (even a Firefox 3.6 only solution).
I apologize if this offends anyone's sensibilities (for example, not supporting every browser). I basically want to write an offline application and Javascript/HTML/CSS seem to be the best candidate considering the complexity of the requirements and the time available. However, I have this single requirement of being able to save data that must be overcome before I can choose this line of development.
How about this downloadify script?
Which is based on Flash and jQuery, which can prompt you dialog box to save file in your computer.
Downloadify.create('downloadify',{
filename: function(){
return document.getElementById('filename').value;
},
data: function(){
return document.getElementById('data').value;
},
onComplete: function(){
alert('Your File Has Been Saved!');
},
onCancel: function(){
alert('You have cancelled the saving of this file.');
},
onError: function(){
alert('You must put something in the File Contents or there will be nothing to save!');
},
swf: 'media/downloadify.swf',
downloadImage: 'images/download.png',
width: 100,
height: 30,
transparent: true,
append: false
});
Using a base64 encoded data URI, this is possible with only html & js. What you can do is encode the data that you want to save (in your case, a string of XML data) into base64, using a js library like jquery-base64 by carlo. Then put the encoded string into a link, and add your link to the DOM.
Example using the library I mentioned (as well as jquery):
<html>
<head>
<title>Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<script>
//include jquery and jquery-base64 here (or whatever library you want to use)
document.write('click to make save dialog');
</script>
</body>
</html>
...and remember to make the content-type something like application/octet-stream so the browser doesn't try to open it.
Warning: some older IE versions don't support base64, but you said that didn't matter, so this should work fine for you.
Without any more insight into your specific requirements, I would not recommend a pure Javascript/HTML solution. From a user perspective you would probably get the best results writing a native application. However if it will be faster to use Javascript/HTML, I recommend using a local application hosting a lightweight web server to serve up your content. That way you can cleanly handle the file saving server-side while focusing the bulk of your effort on the front-end application.
You can code up a web server in - for example - Python or Ruby using very few lines of code and without 3rd party libraries. For example, see:
Making a simple web server in python
WEBrick - Writing a custom servlet
python-trick-really-little-http-server - This one is really simple, and will easily let you server up all of your HTML/CSS/JS files:
"""
Serves files out of its current directory.
Doesn't handle POST requests.
"""
import SocketServer
import SimpleHTTPServer
PORT = 8080
def move():
""" sample function to be called via a URL"""
return 'hi'
class CustomHandler(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
def do_GET(self):
#Sample values in self for URL: http://localhost:8080/jsxmlrpc-0.3/
#self.path '/jsxmlrpc-0.3/'
#self.raw_requestline 'GET /jsxmlrpc-0.3/ HTTP/1.1rn'
#self.client_address ('127.0.0.1', 3727)
if self.path=='/move':
#This URL will trigger our sample function and send what it returns back to the browser
self.send_response(200)
self.send_header('Content-type','text/html')
self.end_headers()
self.wfile.write(move()) #call sample function here
return
else:
#serve files, and directory listings by following self.path from
#current working directory
SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)
httpd = SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer(('localhost', PORT),CustomHandler)
print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()
Finally - Depending on who will be using your application, you also have the option of compiling a Python program into a Frozen Binary so the end user does not have to have Python installed on their machine.
Javascript is not allowed to write to a local machine. Your question is similar to this one.
I suggest creating a simple desktop app.
Is localhost PHP server ok? Web traditionally can't save to hard drive because of security concerns. PHP can push files though it requires a server.
Print to PDF plugins are available for available for all browsers. Install once, print to PDF forever. Then, you can use a javascript or Flash to call a Print function.
Also, if you are developing for an environment where internet access is spotty, conwider using VB.NET or some other desktop language.
EDIT:
You can use the browser's Print function.
Are you looking for something like this?
If PHP is ok, if would be much easier.
With IE you could use document.execCommand, but I note that IE is not an option.
Here's something that looks like it might help, although it will not prompt with SaveAs dialog, https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_snippets/File_I%2F%2FOL.
One simple but odd way to do this that doesn't require any Flash is to create an <a/> with a data URI for its href. This even has pretty good cross-browser support, although for IE it must be at least version 8 and the URI must be < 32k. It looks like someone else on SO has more to say on the topic.
Why not use a hybrid flash for client and some server solution server-side. Most people have flash so you can default to client side to conserve resources on the server.

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