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AspNNTP 1.x

About AspNNTP

AspNNTP allows you to retrieve and post articles to standard NNTP (Usenet/News) servers. Features include:

  1. Retrieving Articles
  2. Posting Articles
  3. Multiple File Attachments
  4. File attachments support MIME and UUEncoding
  5. US Ascii and ISO-8859-1 character sets
  6. PGP Support
  7. Multiple concurrent users (Tested with 15 concurrent connections)

AspNNTP Installation

To use this ASP component move the DLL into a subdirectory (like \winnt\system32 for NT or \windows\system for Win95). Please use the version of regsvr32 that is included with this component or the version that comes with Microsoft ASP (they are the same version).

To register the component on the system change to the directory where you installed the DLL and type:

regsvr32 aspnntp.dll

Simple Retrieve Example

Using the component is as simple as

  1. Creating the object
  2. Setting a few properties
  3. Calling the GetArticle method

The following code demonstrates how to use AspNNTP from VBScript. In this example we'll retrieve the first ten articles available on the msnews.microsoft.com server from the newsgroup named microsoft.public.inetserver.misc.

  rem *************************************************************************
  rem *  Instantiate the NNTP object
  rem *************************************************************************
  Set NNTP = Server.CreateObject("AspNNTP.Conn")

  rem *************************************************************************
  rem *  Set the news server name
  rem *************************************************************************
  NNTP.Server = "msnews.microsoft.com"

  rem *************************************************************************
  rem *  Set the news group to return articles from
  rem *************************************************************************
  if NNTP.SetNewsgroup ("microsoft.public.inetserver.misc") then
    Response.Write "First 10 postings - <p><table width="90%" border=1>"

    For intCount = 1 to 10
      rem *************************************************************************
      rem *  Retrieve the article by number
      rem *************************************************************************
      NNTP.GetArticleByNumber(NNTP.CurrentArticle)
      Response.Write "<tr><td>" & NNTP.CurrentArticle & "</td><td>" & NNTP.Subject & "</td><td>" & NNTP.BodyText & "</td></tr>"

      rem *************************************************************************
      rem *  Point CurrentArticle to the next legal article number
      rem *  Note: Use this rather than looping from FirstArticle to LastArticle
      rem *        since some articles may no longer exist
      rem *************************************************************************
      NNTP.NextArticle
    Next
    Response.Write "</table>"

  else
    Response.Write "<p>Unable to open Server or Newsgroup<br>" & VbCrLf
    Response.Write "Failure was: " & NNTP.Response & "</p>" & VbCrLf
  end if

  rem *************************************************************************
  rem *  Make sure the object is destroyed
  rem *************************************************************************
  Set NNTP = nothing
%>

Notes About Creating the NNTP Object

You can create the NNTP object at two different points in time:

  • Immediately before retrieving or posting an article
  • At the session scope and saved as a session object

You will have to decide when and where it is appropriate to create the object based on your particular application. If you aren't sure which way to create the object reference, or for typical usage, you should create the object immediately usage. Your code would look like this:

Set NNTP = Server.CreateObject("AspNNTP.Conn")

Creating these local references, as demonstrated above, allow you to use the object on multiple application threads at the same time.

To create an object reference at the session level, your code might look something like this:

if Not IsObject (session("NNTP")) then
  Set NNTP = Server.CreateObject("AspNNTP.Conn")
  Set session("NNTP") = NNTP
else
  Response.write "Cached session object reference being used<p>"
  Set NNTP = session("NNTP")
end if

About purchasing AspNNTP

  1. The registration license fee covers only one server CPU per license. Dual-CPU servers require a license for each CPU.
  2. Evaluation copies will expires. See the Expires property for details on determining when your copy will expire.
  3. Attachments are enabled in the registered version but not in eval copies.
  4. An X-Header has been added (that is normally not displayed by most news programs) showing who the component is registered to. When you register make sure that the name you want displayed is included in your registration information. Normally this will be a company name. Changes will NOT be made once the product has been shipped to users who register.

About Upgrades

  1. Users can upgrade for free for minor version changes. For example, upgrades from version 1.00 to 1.99 are free. The upgrade from 1.99 to 2.0 may carry an additional license fee.
  2. The latest version of the components are always available at http://www.serverobjects.com/products.htm.   If a fee is associated with obtaining the upgrade it will be noted on that page.

Upgrade Instructions

To upgrade the component from a previous version please follow these steps:

  1. Stop all IIS related services such as Gopher, FTP and W3SVC.
  2. Change to the directory where the component is located and type "regsvr32 /u aspnntp.dll"
  3. Move the new copy of aspnntp.dll to the current directory and type "regsvr32 aspnntp.dll"
  4. Restart the necessary services.

Common Problems

Server object error 80040154.
This is the most common error reported. The error means that ASP could not create the object. Causes include:

  1. You never ran regsvr32 on the DLL. See installation section of this document.
  2. You registered the DLL with regsvr32 in one subdirectory and moved it to another.
  3. IIS does not have proper security permissions to access the DLL or the directory you installed it to. See the ASP FAQ (http://www.signmeup.com/faq/) for information on changing security.
  4. Your server may be running low on memory.
  5. Your evaluation copy has expired. If you purchased the product be sure you followed directions to install your product key.

Note: Some users have reported that restarting the server after registering the DLL was required to use the component. This should not be necessary but reportedly works in a few cases.

Server object error 'ASP 0177:800401f3'.
This error means "Invalid class string" -- in other words the call to CreateObject failed because the name object cannot be found by the OLE sub-system. Causes include:

  1. You really didn't run regsvr32 on the server after all.
  2. You ran regsvr32 but it reported an error.
  3. Someone modified security on part of the registry that's preventing the OLE subsystem from reading all or part of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT tree.
  4. The name of the object you are trying to create was mispelled or is incorrect.

Questions about AspNNTP

How do I determine a cause of failure? If the component can determine why a method call failed, that information will be stored in the Response property. So, for example, to print that information to the clients browser you could add the following code: 
if not NNTP.SetNewsgroup ("microsoft.test") then
  if NNTP.Response <> "'' then
    strError = NNTP.Response
  else
    strError = "Unknown"
  end if
  Response.Write "NNTP failure occured. Reason: " & strError
end if
MessageIDs aren't appearing. They are probably wrapped in HTML tag identifiers <> so you'll need to translate these characters or strip them before you display to a Web browser.
How do I thread messages? AspNNTP does not internally support threading messages. If you want to display message threads you'll have to parse the References header and build the threaded message list. See the NNTP specs available on the Net for details.
How do I post a reply to a message? Grab the message ID for the message and when you create a new Post set the References field to the MessageID you are responding to.
How do I cancel a message? you need to AddExtraHeaders as follows 
Subject: cmsg cancel <msg_id_to_cancel>
Control: cancel <msg_id_to_cancel>
Approved: user@name.com
AspNNTP works great but sometimes I get "Server object error 'ASP 0177:80040154'". What is causing this? If AspNNTP works fine, then it suddenly stops working and ASP begins to report this error, then you've probably got a memory leak under IIS/ASP. What has happened is that AspNNTP objects can no longer be created. This could be caused by a) You haven't installed the ASP patches that fix known ASP memory leaks b) You have a filter or extension installed that's leaking memory c) You have another component that is leaking memory.

AspNNTP 1.x has been run under BoundsChecker to verify that AspNNTP does not leak memory.

How do I create a line-break in a message? Under VBScript you can use the predefined constant VbCrLf. Simply using a Chr(13) or a Chr(10) will not work --you must use both. A Carriage-return and line-feed character are required to create a new line in the message.
What versions of PGP does AspNNTP support? AspNNTP can support any encryption program that uses command-line parameters. Using PGPPath and PGPParams you can specify input, output and processing options. The current version of PGP (5.0) does not support command-line parameters but the commercial PGP 4.x does as well as the freeware (non-commercial use) PGP 2.6.2.
Can I repeatedly assign values to the BodyText property? and "The message text keeps growing with each email I send." Yes, the text will be appended to the message. Use ClearBodyText if you need to clear the message text.
How do I upgrade to the latest version? Download the latest "eval" version and follow the upgrade directions provided earlier in this document.
My component is registered. Should the Expires property return a date? No. Registered versions return N/A for an expiration date. The registration process (per the instructions you received) should be run on the server.

Technical Support

If you require technical support please see our tech support page at http://www.serverobjects.com/support.htm

AspNNTP Properties

Property Description
AttContentType Contains the ContentType for a message attachment after you call NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo.

Example:

if NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "ContentType=" & NNTP.AttContentType
AttFileName Contains the FileName for a message attachment after you call NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo.

Example:

if NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "FileName=" & NNTP.AttFileName
AttFileSize Contains the FileSize for a message attachment after you call NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo.

Example:

if NNTP.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "File Size=" & NNTP.AttFileSize
AttachmentCount After you have retrieved a message the AttachmentCount property contains the number of attachements that were found within the message.

Example:

NNTP.Retrieve intMsgNumber
Response.Write "This message has " & _
  NNTP.AttachmentCount & " attachments"
AttachmentDirectory The AttachmentDirectory property specifies where attachments will be written to when the SaveAttachment method is called.
BodyText The article body text. To clear the text after you have assigned it, you can use the ClearBodyText Method.

Example:

NNTP.BodyText = "I'd like to let everyone know about this great new opportunity..."
CharSet The character set used by the article. By default CharSet is US Ascii. Use CustomCharSet if you wish to use an alternate CharSet.

Valid values:

  • 1 = US Ascii
  • 2 = ISO-8859-1

Example:

NNTP.CharSet = 2

ContentType The ContentType property allows you to set the ContentType header of the article's BodyText. If, for example, you wanted to send HTML as the article's body, you could set ContentType = "text/html" and News programs that support HTML content could properly display the HTML text.

Note: The ContentType property is ignored if you have file attachments.

Example:

NNTP.ContentType = "text/html"

Connected The Connected property returns a value of true if the component is currently connected to the Server or false if it is not connected.

Example:

If NNTP.Connected then ...

CurrentArticle The CurrentArticle property indicates what article the component currently points to. Immediately after opening a Newsgroup CurrentArticle points to the FirstArticle value. Calling the NextArticle method advances the CurrentArticle point to the next valid article in the selected newsgroup.

Example:

NNTP.GetArticleByNumber(CurrentArticle)

CustomCharSet If you wish to use a character set besides the included types you can set CustomCharSet to a character set string.

Example:

NNTP.CustomCharSet = "ISO-2022" or
NNTP.CustomCharSet = "big5"

DateTime The DateTime property indicates the date and time of the article posting. The standard format of this property is

Weekday, DD-Mon-YY HH:MM:SS TIMEZONE

Distribution This optional property is used to alter the distribution scope of the message. It has the same format as the Groups property. User subscriptions are still controlled by Newsgroups, but the message is sent to all systems subscribing to the newsgroups on the Distribution line instead of the Newsgroups line. Thus, a car for sale in New Jersey might have headers including

Newsgroups: net.auto,net.wanted
Distribution: nj.all

so that it would only go to persons subscribing to net.auto or net.wanted within New Jersey. The intent of this header is to further restrict the distribution of a newsgroup, not to increase it. A local newsgroup, such as nj.crazy-eddie, will probably not be propagated by sites outside New Jersey that do not show such a newsgroup as valid. Wildcards in newsgroup names in the Distribution line are allowed. Followup articles should default to the same Distribution line as the original article, but the user can change it to a more limited one, or escalate the distribution if it was originally restricted and a more widely distributed reply is appropriate.

Encoding The encoding type for attachments. The default setting is MIME.

Valid values:

  • 1 = UUEncoded
  • 2 = MIME

Example:

NNTP.Encoding = 1

Expires If the component is an eval version the expires property will return the date that the component quits functioning.

Example:

Response.Write "Component Expires: " & NNTP.Expires

ExpirationDate This property value, if present, is in a legal USENET date format. It specifies a suggested expiration date for the article. If not present, the local default expiration date is used. If you are posting a new article, this field can be set to expire the article at a specific date & time.
FirstArticle Once a Newsgroup name has been set using the SetNewsGroup method, the FirstArticle property contains the article number of the first article available on the selected newsgroup.

Example:

NNTP.GetArticleByNumber(FirstArticle)

FollowUpTo This property has the same format as Groups. If present, follow-up articles are to be posted to the newsgroup(s) listed here. If this property value is not present, followups are posted to the newsgroup(s) listed in the Groups property. This property is filled in once an article's headers have been read using either GetArticleHeaders or a call to one of the GetArticle methods.
FromName The article originator’s name.

Example:

NNTP.FromName = "Joe’s Widget Shop"

FromAddress The article originator’s email address.

Example:

NNTP.FromAddress = "joe@widgets.com"

Groups The Groups property specifies which newsgroup or newsgroups the article belongs in. Multiple newsgroups may be specified, separated by a comma. Newsgroups specified must all be the names of existing newsgroups, as no new newsgroups will be created by simply posting to them.

Wildcards (e.g., the word "all") are never allowed in aNewsgroups line. For example, a newsgroup "net.all" isillegal, although a newsgroup name "net.sport.football" is permitted.

Example:

NNTP.Groups = "microsoft.iis4.activeserverpgs,microsoft.iis4.general"

LastArticle Once a Newsgroup name has been set using the SetNewsGroup method, the LastArticle property contains the article number of the last article available on the selected newsgroup.

Example:

NNTP.GetArticleByNumber(LastArticle)

Lines MessageID returns the number of lines in an article as indicated by the message hearder for the current article. This property is filled in once an article's headers have been read using either GetArticleHeaders or a call to one of the GetArticle methods.
MessageID MessageID returns the message ID for the current article. This property is filled in once an article's headers have been read using either GetArticleHeaders or a call to one of the GetArticle methods.

The Message-ID line gives the article a unique identifier. The same message ID may not be reused during the lifetime of any article with the same message ID.

In order to conform to RFC 822, the Message-ID must havethe format

"<" "unique" "@" "full domain name" ">"

where "full domain name" is the full name of the host at which the article entered the network, including a domain that host is in, and unique is any string of printing ASCII characters, not including "<", ">", or "@". Forexample, the "unique" part could be an integer representing a sequence number for articles submitted to the network, or a short string derived from the date and time the article was created.

Example:

NNTP.MessageID = "01bc8665$d4b630e0$f6506ca3@localispname.net"

NewsGroups Returns a variant array of Newsgroups on the current NNTP server. See nntp5.asp for a demo on how to enumerate the newsgroups.
NNTPLog If you need to debug the session provide a log file name here. Make sure the IUSR_XYZ IIS user has security that allows the component to write to this file. Warning: Do not use this setting in situations where multiple users can access this component at the same time. This is for single user debugging ONLY!

Example:

NNTP.NNTPLog = "c:\nntplog.txt"

Organization The text of this property is a short phrase describing the organization to which the sender belongs, or to which the machine belongs. The intent of this line is to help identify the person posting the message, since site names are often cryptic enough to make it hard to recognize the organization by the electronic address.

Example:

NNTP.Organization = "Joe's Widgets"

Password This optional property is used when the Server you are connecting to requires a username and password to connect.

Example:

NNTP.Password = "123456"

PGPPath The path where PGP is located.
PGPParams Parameters that PGP will use to process message.
References This property lists the message ID's of any articles prompting the submission of this article. It is required for all follow-up articles, and forbidden when a new subject is created.

The purpose of the References header is to allow articles to be grouped into conversations by the user interface program. This allows conversations within a newsgroup to be kept together, and potentially users might shut off entire conversations without unsubscribing to a newsgroup.

NNTP.References ="<01bc8665$d4b630e0$f6506ca3@localispname.net>"

ReplyTo If present, mailed replies to the author should be sent to the name given here. Otherwise, replies are mailed to the name on the FromAddress property.

Example:

NNTP.ReplyTo = "joe@localispname.net"

Response The Response property returns any error messages that may occur.
Server The Server property specifies which NNTP server the component should attempt to connect to.

Example:

NNTP.Server = "msnews.microsoft.com"

Subject The Subject line tells what the article is about. It should be suggestive enough of the contents of the article to enable a reader to make a decision whether to read the article based on the subject alone. If the article is submitted in response to another article (e.g., is a "followup") the default subject should begin with the four characters "Re: " and the References line is required.

Example:

NNTP.Subject = "Stock split announced!"

SuppressMsgBody The SuppressMsgBody property is true by default and is used in conjuction with the NNTPLog property. When NNTPLog is set to a file and SuppressMsgBody is true the log file receives a copy of the article text. If SuppressMsgBody is false the article text is not sent to the log.
TimeOut Timeout is the maximum time that AspNNTP should wait for a response from the remote server. The default is 45 seconds.

Example:

NNTP.Timeout = 20

TotalArticles The TotalArticles property returns the total number of articles available for the newsgroup you selected with the SetNewsgroup method.

Response.Write "There are " & NNTP.TotalArticles & " in this group.<br>"

UserName This optional property is used when the Server you are connecting to requires a username and password to connect.

Example:

NNTP.UserName = "123456"

Version Gets the internal component version number.

Example:

Response.Write "Component Version: " & NNTP.Version

WordWrap The WordWrap property is off by default. Setting WordWrap to true causes the article body to wordwrap at the position specified by the WordWrapLen property. This is only used during a POST operation.
WordWrapLen The WordWrapLen property is set to 70 by default. You can modify the position that wordwrap occurs by changing this value.

ASPMail Component Methods

Method Parameters Return Value Description
AddAttachment Filename to attach to message.

Example:

NNTP.AddAttachment "p:\shipping\proddsk1.zip"

True or False Adds attachments to current article.

Make sure that the IUSR_XYZ IIS user, or the authenticated user has security rights that allow the component to read the necessary files! Note: Attachments are not supported in the eval version

AddExtraHeader A string value that forms a proper NNTP Header

Example:

NNTP.AddExtraHeader
("HeaderName: HdrValue")

True or false. Returns true if Header was added. Adds extra Headers to the article envelope.
ClearAttachments None

Example:

NNTP.ClearAttachments

None Clears any attachments that were previously set.
ClearBodyText None None Clears any text assigned to the articles’s body which may have been set previously by using the BodyText property.
ClearExtraHeaders None None Clears any extra Headers that were set by use of AddExtraHeader.
GetAllNewsgroups String specifying file to retrieve Newsgroup listing from. True/False If an empty string is passed as the parameter the list of Newsgroups is retrieved from the Server.
GetArticleByID String specifying a known MessageID for a article that was previously posted. True/False Retrieves the article and places the header values into their appropriate properties (such as FromName, FromAddress, Subject, BodyText, Organization, Date etc...)
GetArticleByNumber Integer value indicating the message number on the server. True/False Retrieves the article and places the header values into their appropriate properties (such as FromName, FromAddress, Subject, BodyText, Organization, Date etc...)
GetArticleHeaders None True/False Retrieves the CurrentArticle headers only and places the values into their appropriate properties (such as FromName, FromAddress, Subject, Organization, Date etc...)
GetAttachmentInfo Integer value indicating which message attachment you want to get the properties for. N/A GetAttachment Info will get the properties for the specified attachment and fill in the AttContentType, AttFileName and AttFileSize properties.
GetBodyTextFromFile strInputFile, bolEraseInputFile, bolShowWindow True/False Used for posting messages this method loads article's body text from a file. Optionally runs PGP on the message text (See PGPPath and PGPParams).
GetHeaderField String parameter specifying which article header to return. String value of header specified it it exists for the current retrieve article. Once an article's headers have been retrieved using GetHeaders or a GetArticle call, the article headers are parsed into the standard properties. But some custom or limited-use header fields are not parsed. These are still available by calling this method with the desired header field as the parameter.
GetNextArticleHeaders Integer value specifying how many headers to retrieve Variant array of variants. You can retrieve multiple headers using this method. The variant array returns the following items in the following order:

ArticleID
Subject

NextArticle None True/False Moves the article pointer to the next legal article.
PreviousArticle None True/False Moves the article pointer to the previous legal article.
PrepareToPost None None Clears all header fields and the BodyText to prepare the component for a new Post. This should always be called before filling in property values for a new article post.
PostArticle None True/False Posts a new article to the server.
SaveAttachment Integer value indicating which attachment to save. True or False SaveAttachment will save an attachment to the AttachmentDirectory's path. SaveAttachment will attempt to determine the proper file name before saving.
SaveNewsgroupList String value indicating a filename to save the newsgroup listing to. True/False Saves the newsgroup list to the specified file
SetNewsgroup String value of newsgroup component should open. True/False Attempts to open the specified newsgroup. FirstArticle, CurrentArticle and TotalArticles are initialized when SetNewsGroup is called.

 

 

 

 
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