Including from another server?

grabbing files across the internet?

[Xedium]

Here's my problem: I get to be webmaster for this small news thing, and I was going to code a small PHP CMS for it. However, the numbskulls running the place are using IIS with ASP. My plan is to host it all on my own .com, and then have ASP grab the processed output and shoot it back out at the client.

What's the simplest way to do this? I want to just use the URL, like http://example.com/index.php to write a one-line ASP file.

[mrMister]

If you want a question answered, it's probably best not to refer your audience as numbskulls :p

What you're wanting to do is crazy. It'll slow the site down something chronic (the user requests a document from the IIS server, rather than returning the document, the IIS server then has to request the document from your PHP adding an esctra unnecessary download to the equation).

You're doubling the chance of failure. If either of the servers fails then the site will go down.

There's absolutely no good reason to do what you're proposing.

Why not just confess to them that you don't know anything about IIS? Just tell them you can do the site on PHP with your own server. Then just change the DNS to point to your PHP server.

[Easy_Coder]

>>grabbing files across the internet

2 words... web service

2 more words... won't scale

[Xedium]

Oops, I was referring to my local sysadmins - that does read insultingly, my apologies.

Easy_Coder, I have no idea what you're referring to by "web service", sorry.

Won't scale? I don't expect high traffic anyways, considering the audience and publication frequency.

Is there some example code to include data from arbitrary web sources?

[defanjos]

Have the ASP people look into XMLHTTP, AspTear and AspHTTP.

[TheNige]

I agree, just use XMLHTTP and grab the output of the file and the you could write that file to a local cache on the ASP server instead of going to get it for each request.

Web service would be ideal though.

[mrMister]

Xedium, I'll repeat again. Its not just about scalability. Your site will run twice as slow as it should do becuase of the extra HTTP request.

You simply need to change the DNS to point to your PHP server.

If your client doesn't want to do this, then you can sure as hell be sure they don't want you making HTTP requests across the Internet from your server either.

[Xedium]

You see, this is a high school I'm volunteering to do this for, so nobody really knows anything about ASP (me included).

I'm starting to consider invisible frames by now, although caching sounds intriguing.

[mrMister]

Yeah, caching is the better option. However if your pages are not dynamic, why not set your PHP server to upload its output as HTML files to the IIS server?

Changing the DNS is the best option though.

[TheNige]

I you know PHP you can easily learn ASP.