Linking Launchers to Servers

[1ns0mnia]

Hi there,

im pretty new to VB, started making a few launcher and other programs and now i am at the stage where i know what the code does and can vertually type it out with few errors, but im wanting to move up onto linking the launchers with server.

for example, if a server has 300 players online, would it be possible to code in VB 2008 so that it has an uplink to the launcher telling people how many people are online?

im not asking you to do it for me, just for a bit of a head start as i wouldnt know where to start with this, thats if its even possible,

i was also thinking of having an uplink the the news and etc aswell, but for now just the basic ones will do

thanks in advance,
Insomnia

[Clain]

Hmmm... best solution would to be load the number of players online from the stats page of your server(Its generated in XML so its even easier :P), since ascent derivatives don't support .NET addons now because the last time it was updated was like... 2007.

So look into the XML namespace and read it from stats.xml

[JoeBiden]

Xmlreader, very easy to use.

[Hellgawd]

Or, if you have a server website that is already running a online_players php script, you could open a small web window on your program and have it load that php script.

[suicidity]

The cleanest way would to post to the webserver requesting the information; Something serverside.

something maybe like..

Public Shared Function RetrievePlayers() As String
            Dim webclient As New WebClient()
            Dim Response As Byte()
            Try
                webclient.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")

                Response = webclient.UploadData("http://127.0.0.1/PLAYERCOUNT.php", "POST", new Byte())
                webclient.Dispose()
            Catch ex As WebException
                webclient.Dispose()
                Return "error"
            End Try

            Return System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(Response)
        End Function

Then you could do a server-side php script that just read up the players or whatever you'd like to do, and then echo it.

[1ns0mnia]

ahh ok thanks guys

ill give it a go

edit: need to spread rep but you will get it eventually XD