I have written an extensive commercial site using Ultradev 4 with ASP and a remote MySQL database. This has worked fine for many months, and I now need to improve the local access to customer order data. Specifically, I need to add a button or link to a chosen customer order which will download data from Customer file, order header file and order detail lines to a floppy disk. I hear you gasp, but thats what I need. The web-site management PC is totally divorced from our internal network for security reasons.

This is a plea for a which-way-to go ? I dont care what the format is, as I am capable of reading anything from the floppy with low-level if necessary. For example, I tried printing the customer order sheet via a printer set to text-only, write to file, and indeed got the data, but it was un-formatted and un-structured. There is probably a better way. Any help please ?

Perhaps add the ability for the user to download a CSV file which can easily be opened in Excel.

Puzzle 5 Not much different from other solutions by Manohar Kamath posted 1/12/99
http://www.asp101.com/puzzles/puzzle5_s7.asp

Puzzle 5 "Write delimited data to browser window" by Kirk Lockhart posted on 12/21/98
Write the data in plain text to the browser window, and the user can save the results as a plain text file and then import the data into Excel or whatever application they want.
http://www.asp101.com/puzzles/puzzle5_s1.asp

Thanks for the help - I appreciate it. I actually solved the puzzle by inserting a form into the sequence followed by the user placing an order, which sends an email to me, with the data structured within it. The email when received is saved to floppy disc, and can be easily read low-level to yield the data. Works fine, giving the same result locally as the approach you suggest.

There is a further benefit that the complete order is available via two routes, so if lost via one route the other still exists. Yes, our ISP HAS lost our MySQL data once already, and the restore did not of course include the latest orders.

I've implemented a number of downloadable reports for clients - the direct .CSV link , or even better tab dleimted is the most painless way to directly access data.

gbhall - I don't like a system that 1. relies on e-mail and 2. makes extra work for you to process it after received.

And I find clients really like having the data in excel - it's what most are comfortable with.

Dave Goodman
note my original post specifies we need to post-process the data anyway because we dont want the web connection and our local network able to interact in any way whatever. Thats our choice, and the method you suggest would not improve on my current solution, I'm afraid. In any case, you do not reveal how you produce a direct cvs link ??

Originally Posted by Bullschmidt

Perhaps add the ability for the user to download a CSV file which can easily be opened in Excel.

Puzzle 5 Not much different from other solutions by Manohar Kamath posted 1/12/99
http://www.asp101.com/puzzles/puzzle5_s7.asp

Puzzle 5 "Write delimited data to browser window" by Kirk Lockhart posted on 12/21/98
Write the data in plain text to the browser window, and the user can save the results as a plain text file and then import the data into Excel or whatever application they want.
http://www.asp101.com/puzzles/puzzle5_s1.asp

The solution above has been found to work very well indeed, and represents 98% of what is wanted. I found I could define the name I wanted for the down load file, but could NOT find a way of defining a path - specifically A: before the filename. I find that the download always defaults to 'my documents' (with the desired name) and if I add A: it changes the filename to some random characters. Adding A%38 (htm encoding special character colon) returns the same filename without anything preceding it, still in 'my documents' default. Anyone know a way of adding the 2% improvement of my desired path to the floppy?

David

In the Save As dialog, choose the A Drive from the drop down list and hit save.

You won't do it with server side scripting - it's a purely client side thing, the browser decides where to save it...