Open a file from anywhere - with credentials?

Question

Hi;
Is there a way to open a file from anywhere where I give the uri and uname/password and it gives me back a Stream to read? Including:
1. ftp - with/without credentials
2. http - anon, basic, digest, & windows authentication
3. REST where you must do basic on the first request (anon returns an error message as an html page).
4. share on the same domain - requires a different user's credentials.
5. share on a different domain
6. share on a workgroup computer
7. share on a non-Windows server
8. ???
thanks - dave
Edited by: [email protected] on Sep 15, 2010 2:04 PM

Answer 1

[email protected] wrote:
Hi;
I just wanted to add the use case so you would understand why we need to handle all cases. I suggest that you actually ask customers what they want initially instead of assuming that you need all of them initially.
We have a reporting system we sell and one thing users can do is import images from an external source. Some users put their images on a web or FTP server requiring credentials. Others put it on a server that requires credentials. And we're now getting requests to pull from SharePoint.Fine. So you have the following task that has the following steps.
1. Define source of image and where to store it.
2. Create retriever based on 1.
3. Run instance of 2
4. Log errors from 3 or put retrieved file into location specified by 1.
In the above step 2 is a plug in that represents different ways of retrieving information.
And expanding on something that was said before you have a HUGE task in front of you in terms of supporting everything that you list above.
For example using only ftp these are some of the things I see.
1. There are at least three types of secure "ftp" servers. The protocol for handling security is different for each.
2. Although FTP is a protocol the implementation of how the servers work can be substantially different. For general handling the will likely require scripting for each targetted server.
3. Locations on FTP servers not necessarily simple. Examples.
...a. Login to server. Cd to a directory. Get a file which has a date as part of the name.
...b. Login to a server. Cd to a directory with a timestamp in the name. Get a file.
...c. Login to a server. Get a file which has a random name based on the last creation timestamp of each file.
Note that FTP is actually easier than some of the other cases.
And in the above I didn't deal with any of the possible errors.