Can sockets do ssl?

Question

the docs make no mention of it...but it would be real nice.
also, is there a better forum for socket questions?
Mike Cardeiro

Answer 1

So, in an effort to get ExtendScript to communicate to API endpoints over SSL, I came up with a working solution. Maybe it will be useful to other scripters out there?  If AE is running on OSX, we can assume that we can call cURL from the command line via system.callSystem().  If the app is running on Windows, we don't have access to cURL by default, but we do have access to the cscript host that ships with Windows.  So, here is a function that will call either cURL or a specific VBScript that handles a GET or POST request.  The response returned is just a string:
* @method : either "POST" or "GET"
* @endpoint:  a string representing an URI endpoint for any given API
* @query: a string to be sent with the request (i.e. 'firstName=Arie&lastName=Stavchansky').
function webRequest(method, endpoint, query)
    var response = null,
        wincurl  = WORKING_DIR.fsName + '\\lib\\curl.vbs',  //the path to the .vbs file
        curlCmd = '';
    try {
        if ( os() == "Win" ) {
            curlCmd = 'cscript "' + wincurl + '" /Method:' + method + ' /URL:' + endpoint + ' /Query:' + query + ' //nologo';
        } else {
            if (method === "POST") {
                curlCmd = 'curl -s -d "' + query + '" ' + endpoint;
            } else if (method === "GET") {
                curlCmd = 'curl -s -G -d "' + query + '" ' + endpoint;
        response = system.callSystem(curlCmd);
    } catch (err) {
        alert("Error\nUnable to make a `"+ method +"` request to the network endpoint.  Please try again.");
    return response;
function os()
    var os = system.osName;
    if (!os.length) { os = $.os;  }
    app_os =  ( os.indexOf("Win") != -1 )  ?  "Win" : "Mac";
    return app_os;
Here is the VBScript that emulates cURL for GET and POST
set namedArgs = WScript.Arguments.Named
sMethod = namedArgs.Item("Method")
sUrl = namedArgs.Item("URL")
sRequest = namedArgs.Item("Query")
HTTPPost sMethod, sUrl, sRequest
Function HTTPPost(sMethod, sUrl, sRequest)
          set oHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") 
    If sMethod = "POST" Then
        oHTTP.open "POST", sUrl,false
    ElseIf sMethod = "GET" Then
        oHTTP.open "GET", sUrl,false
    End If
          oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
          oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(sRequest)
          oHTTP.send sRequest
          HTTPPost = oHTTP.responseText
          WScript.Echo HTTPPost
End Function
The response returned from `webRequest` is just a string, so depending on the its contents you might have to parse the string to transform it into a useful XML or JSON object.  For JSON, you can do that by using
eval( '(' + response + ')' );
Hope that helps somebody out there!
--Arie