Using Ping command

[derr1ck]

Hi,

I need to be able to ping a domain form within my desktop program, I have tried using :-


put shell ("ping mydomain.com") into field 1

Put this doesn't work and it seems to lockup livecode and I need to force quit the program on my Mac.

Any ideas on how I can do this, would like to check if a website running or not and have a colour bar represent its state.

[Klaus]

Hi Derrick,

one thing to know: SHELL calls in LiveCode are BLOCKING!

Means Livecode will wait until the shell command has finished,
which of course looks as if the app has crashed!

Sorry, no idea how to do this non-blocking.


Best

Klaus

[sturgis]

If you're on windows it should return after 4 pings. If you're on ox x I believe ping continues indefinitely. To fix this use the -c switch

put shell("ping -c4 yourdomain.to.check.com") into field 1 -- will send 4 pings -c = count

[derr1ck]

If you're on windows it should return after 4 pings. If you're on ox x I believe ping continues indefinitely. To fix this use the -c switch

put shell("ping -c4 yourdomain.to.check.com") into field 1 -- will send 4 pings -c = count

Thanks that seems to have worked

[derr1ck]

One other question:

How can I have the script repeat the ping command, say every 5 mins?

so far, via a button I check it by doing:-

set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "white"
put shell ("ping -c2 mydomain.com") into results
put item 2 of results into testit
if testit is empty then
set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "red"
else set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "green"

[shaosean]

If you take your code out of the mouseUp handler and create a new one, you can just use the send command to call the handler every five minutes

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
  doMyPing
end mouseUp

command doMyPing
  set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "white"
  put shell ("ping -c2 mydomain.com") into results
  put item 2 of results into testit
  if testit is empty then 
  set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "red"
  else set the backgroundColor of graphic monitor to "green"
  -- you will need a check here to see if you need to send the command or not
  send "doMyPing" to me in 300 seconds
end doMyPing

[townsend]

Any ideas on how I can do this, would like to check if a website running or not and have a colour bar represent its state.

Ping actually returns a trace route. If you just want to check if the website is up and running maybe you could just try grabbing a page.

Code: Select all

put URL("http://www.somewebsite.com/") into a.variable

[sturgis]

This is a good point. Pinging the machine shows that its there and alive, but that doesn't necessarily mean apache (or whatever webserver they're using) is actually up and working. Hitting a page is probably the better option.

Any ideas on how I can do this, would like to check if a website running or not and have a colour bar represent its state.

Ping actually returns a trace route. If you just want to check if the website is up and running maybe you could just try grabbing a page.

Code: Select all

put URL("http://www.somewebsite.com/") into a.variable

[shaosean]

Of course some people do run servers that are not web servers, so just knowing that you can reach the darn thing is always good too

[ninetrees]

Any ideas on how I can do this, would like to check if a website running or not and have a colour bar represent its state.

I modified the code of "shaosean" (Thanks!) to report the average time for the ping command to a particular site. (apple.com gives the lowest ping time I've ever found.)

Code: Select all

command pingaSite
   put shell ("ping -c4 -q -t4 www.apple.com") into results -- 4 pings, quiet (minimal) response, timeout 4 sec
   put item 2 of results into s
   if s is empty then 
      report "no response"
   else -- parse the line: round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 21.527/25.327/35.363/5.805 ms (item 2 of word 4)
      put word 4 of the last line of results into s
      set the itemdelimiter to "/"
      put  "Ave Ping: " && round(item 2 of s,1) && "ms"  into field "pingTime" -- n/n/n/n ms
   end if
 end pingaSite