Hey, everyone.

I had a place recently where I wanted to make a quick call to the server for
something, but didn't want to load JSRS or MSRS or use frames or layers or
anything, so I hacked up a cookie-based RS call that works nicely for small
needs.  I think I got the germ of the idea from the DYNAPI discussion list.

I make an image object, set its src to the server-side file, with a
parameter and a unique time (to avoid the cache), and the server-side thing
just returns an empty document (which will do nothing to the image anyhow)
but sets a cookie on the client.  Then I check for it a few times with a
delay between checks and run the success callback if found, or the failure
callback if the cookie never got set.

You can return up to 4k of text, I think, with this method.  I haven't got a
full running example, but here is all the code you should need to do it
yourself, so have a bash at it.

Have fun...

 - Brent -

------------------
client side stuff:
------------------

function requestRSCookie( parm, cbSuccess, cbFailure ){
  var i = new Image();
  var d = new Date();
  document.cookie = "RSCookie=x; expires=Fri, 31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT;";
  i.src = "cookieRS.asp?u=" + d.getTime() + "&p=" + escape(parm);
  getRSCookie( 0, cbSuccess, cbFailure );
}

function getRSCookie( attempt, cbSuccess, cbFailure

  var c = getCookie("RSCookie");
  if ( c != null ){
    cbSuccess( c );
  } else {
    if (attempt < 3){
      setTimeout( "getRSCookie( " + (attempt+1) +" );",2000);
    } else {
      cbFailure();
    }
  }
}

function getCookie(sName){
  var aCookie = document.cookie.split("; ");
  for (var i=0; i < aCookie.length; i++){
    var aCrumb = aCookie[i].split("=");
    if (sName == aCrumb[0]) return unescape(aCrumb[1]);
  }
  return null;
}

------------------
server side stuff:
------------------

parm = Request("p")

Response.Cookies("RSCookie") = processParm( parm )
Response.End

Function processParm( parm )
  '...do something here
End Function