Retrieve a HTML page from within your (ASP-)Scripts without any components

Introduction

Today I needed to retrieve a HTML document not local to my website from within an ASP application and display its content. I've written some time ago another ActiveX component, but I wanted it this time without any components.

Therefore I used PerlScript that comes with ActivePerl to write two small functions in Perl and use them from within normal (VBScript-)ASP.

Just two functions

The functions are called GetUrlContent(url) and GetUrlBody(url). Both functions return the content of an arbitrary URL as a string. The first function returns the whole content, whereas the second function returns only what is inside the <body>-tags.

The usage of the functions is very easy, just call them with the URL you wisth to retrieve. E.g.

...
Response.Write GetUrlContent("http://www.codeproject.com/")
...

...
Response.Write GetUrlBody("http://www.codeproject.com/")
...

Installation

Beside the latest version of ActiveState's ActivePerl, you need to download and install the libwww-perl from cpan.org.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

Uwe Keim

Chief Technology Officer Zeta Producer Desktop CMS

Germany

Member

Uwe does programming since 1989 with experiences in Assembler, C++, MFC and lots of web- and database stuff and now uses ASP.NET and C# extensively, too. He has also teached programming to students at the local university.

In his free time, he does climbing, running and mountain biking. Recently he became a father of a cute boy.

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Tiny little Perl library to retrieve an arbitrary URL as a string.

Type	Article
Licence	CPOL
First Posted	22 Jul 2001
Views	41,695
Bookmarked	6 times

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