Todd,
I'm doing, practically the same thing. I have experience with ASP so I set up a web site to use ASP (it's Windows IIS so pretty easy to do). Then I have my Java Applet send requests back to my web site for data.
To encapsulate every thing I created a class, 'WebData', which knows how to connect to the web site and can build a request. Here is the code for that:
import java.io.* ;
import java.net.* ;
import java.util.*;
public class WebData {
HttpURLConnection con;
String cb;
/**
* Method WebData
*/
public WebData(String codeBase) {
cb = codeBase;
}
public Vector<String> getData(Vector<String> params) {
Vector<String> aList = new Vector<String>();
URL textURL;
String line;
String command = cb + "getData.asp?";
for(int i=0;i<params.size();i++) {
command = command.concat(params.get(i) + "&");
}
command = command.substring(0, command.length() - 1);
try {
textURL = new URL(command);
BufferedReader theStream = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(textURL.openStream()));
// now read the lines one at a time
while ( ( line = theStream.readLine() ) != null ) {
aList.add(line);
} // close while loop
theStream.close();
} catch(Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
return(aList);
}
}
Because this is an applet, it's simplier to connect back to the web site that sent the applet. The function 'getData()' takes a Vector of string consisting of the name of the function (on the ASP file) that I want to call and any parameters that are necessary to call that function. It returns a Vector of String.
In my application, the list boxes and combo boxes have an instance of the WebData class and know how to display the Vector of String they get back from the getData() function. So the Vector to call the data just gets passed thru them as such:
public void listJobCodes() {
Vector<String> params = new Vector<String>();
int i = WorkGroups.getSelectedIndex();
if(i < 0) {
i=0;
}
params.add("getJobCodes");
params.add((String)WorkGroups.getKey(i));
JobCodes.getData(params);
}
This method tells the JobCodes list to get the job codes associated with a specific WorkGroup that the user selected. You can see where it builds the parameters that will be sent to WebData. The function 'getJobCodes' is coded in the asp file on the web server.
This could be done with jsp, perl, php or any cgi application.
Hope this helps.
