Follow up to 'can I write from a URL Connection'

Question

Hi,
I think the sender of the original post was trying to do what I am. Sorry but I didn't understand the reponse given so I'm posting my own question.
I have a survey applet that is intended for Intranet use only. The idea is to get the user to respond to a series of questions and then store the response, 1,2 or 3, as a string in a .TXT file.
Here is my code snippet for the connection :-
answURL = new URL(this.getCodeBase(),"answ.txt");
answWeb = answURL.openConnection();
answWeb.setDoOutput(true);
answWeb.connect();
answOutput = answWeb.getOutputStream();
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(answOutput);
out.println(allTheAnswers); // a String
out.close();
This compiles and runs without complaint but the output file is not updated.
Ideally I wanted to append to the file.
Reading other postings and Sun's tutorials I guess this is not possible, can I do this? or :-
1) Write a CGI script to take the input?
2) Write a servlet to take the input?
3) Make a socket connection to a server app that will do this?
4) Something else?
I need to keep the solution as simple as possible.
many thanks
Chas

Answer 1

Hi,
I think here you want take some input from the user and write it in a file which resides on the sever.
By opening an URL to a file you can only read the contents of that file, you can write any contents to it or append it.
So as you said either you have to have a
1. CGI script
2. Socket connection or
3. Servlet
on the server.
In the case of CGI script and Servlet you can use URL but in case of Socket Server you need to implement a socket client in your client application.
More details about Reading and Writing from URL and Networking please read Java Online Tutorial.
all the best,
Raj