Stuart McLachlan
stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Wed Nov 17 00:04:51 CST 2004
On 17 Nov 2004 at 15:03, Darren DICK wrote: > > So...Is there a way I can type in say...http://somewebsite.someserver.com.au > and return "true" if the site exists or "false" if the site does not exist. > > I know I can ping http://somewebsite.someserver.com.au > <http://somewebsite.someserver.com.au/> and get a result > but how would I capture the ping 'reply' from DOS to a table? > > Or...if any of you already have a method they would like to share them > please let me know > Are they all domains or are some of them links to pages? If the latter, you need to test whether the domain is valid (using DNS lookup) and also test whether a link valid is valid (ie look for 404 messages in response to HTTP requests). In other words you will have to write your own HTTP engine :-( That will still not detect links that point to "parked" domains (take a look at http://www.airniugini.com as an example of a parked domain) -- Stuart