Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

[cdemallie]

I have an AMS project that has been working fine for months, but now I have a user who is on a network with a proxy server and I can't seem to get the Internet-Download Web File action to work. I know the server, port, username and password are all being entered correctly in the Dialog-Get Proxy Settings box. I even tried hard coding the proxy info into the download action. Internet browsing works fine. If I enter the URL for the file in IE, it prompts me to save it without a hitch.

Many proxy servers do not require a username and password, but this one does. Are there any gatchas I need to be aware of? Has anyone had similar difficulties? Is AMS using some protocol in addition to or instead of http to download the file?

With verbose error handling, the message just reads, "Failed to download file from web. Unknown error." It goes on to list the file source and destination, but that's it.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. I'm at the end of my rope.

Thanks.

[cchian]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

Our proxy also requires a username and password. AMS itself can check for updates without problems, but I cannot do the same from most other programs. Whenever I open my browser to go to a website, I get the proxy login prompt. After I type my login info, Internet Explorer brings a "The page cannot be displayed" screen. I must click on "Refresh" or press "F5" for the actual web page to come up. Once the page is up, I can navigate to other sites and download files by typing the URL in IE. I am told this is due to the way our proxy has been setup.
If your client has a similar setting, maybe you can try to issue a refresh command after the download? I haven't done what you are trying to do, but I or someone else can test it if you can post the code.

Good luck

[cdemallie]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

Thanks for your reply cchian. I'm not opening IE and trying to download the file. I'm using AMS's DownloadWebFile action so issuing a Refresh won't help here. The code is pretty simple. I try to download a file and test whether or not it was successful. I posted the relavent code here http://www.4glschools.com/test/filedownload.txt. I included the code that pulls the proxy server info from the registry to help anyone who wants to try and duplicate this problem. Remember, the download works fine when a proxy isn't invloved. Thank you in advance.

[cchian]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

I cannot get it to work either. Your code does detect my proxy address/port correctly. I will check with someone that knows internet stuff well when he returns to the office.

Carlos

[cchian]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

I just had our internet expert look at the logs and he sees that the request is being sent out correctly, but nothing is happening afterwards. Has anyone else been able to get this to work? Could there actually be a problem in AMS4 with proxy downloads?

[Lorne]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

None that we know of. Of course, it's always a possibility, however in this case I'd suspect the problem lies at the proxy end. Especially if you need to refresh a page in IE to get past the proxy...that's not exactly normal behaviour. Maybe a tiemout value needs to be lengthened in the proxy settings, or something.

[Colin]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

You've run into the fundamental nature of firewalls and proxy servers - to restrict access to Internet (and intranet or whatever you want) resources. The firewall wouldn't be much good if you could just bypass it whenever you see fit.

Now that being said, it's really a matter of how the network admin decides to restrict traffic. It can be done on a per-port basis or even on a per-application basis. While AMS4 uses standard ports such as 80 (HTTP), it is still possible that the network admin has locked things down so tight that they don't want anything except explicitly defined applications to send/recieve traffic.

So, the short answer is that AMS is sending the information correctly, but either the proxy is not recognizing the standard format or it is configured in such a way as to block the request. This may be the result of either a misconfigured proxy or an extremely security conscious network admin.

[cdemallie]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

Hey Colin & Lorne,

The user has no problem downloading the file if the URL is entered in IE's address bar. When the user does this, they are prompted for their username and password and then the file is downloaded. How does AMS's download request differ from IE's download request? Perhaps AMS is not responding correctly to the proxy server's request for the username and password? Is this something you can test in your lab?

[Lorne]

Re: Internet - Download Web File with proxy settings

Like Colin said, it's possible that your network admin configured the systems so that only traffic from specific applications -- in this case, Internet Explorer -- is allowed "through" the proxy.

Are you able to pass the username and password along with the URL, or is the proxy using some kind of server-side scripting to ask for that information?

Your proxy needs to support some method of providing the username and password in an automated way.