TacoPost - The Dynamic IP Poster by jason plumb

tacopost

"More tags and fewer lags and nags"

TacoPost is a small, yet very flexible Dynamic IP posting program. Wait, I hear you say that you have seen thousands of these things on the net, what's so special about this thing? Lemme tell ya, TacoPost is smaller and more flexible than most of the garbage that is out there. Period.

The program is FREEWARE and can be freely used and distributed by any means. There are no strings attached.

Why the name you ask? Well, I was really craving tacos most of the time I was writing it. Plain and simple (plus it sounds way better than "IP Poster")

Program/system requirements
Installation Instructions/Program Usage
Downloads
Future changes/modifications
Revision History
Feedback

Program/system Requirements

Win95 (should work under Win98 and WinNT as well, as of 8/10/98 untested)
Not very much RAM and about 300k HD space
RAS - Dial Up Networking must be installed
An FTP site where you can post a web page

If you have success (or failure!) using this program under Win98 or WinNT, please send me feedback and let me know your system configuration and the exact results.

Program Instructions/Usage

TacoPost is extremely easy to use. There is no fancy-pants installation program and no extra garbage gets added to your system folder or windows registry.

Installation:

Create a new folder where you wish to install the program
Unzip the program archive into this new directory (using something like WinZip).
Modify the program's .INI file to reflect your system parameters
Run TacoPost.exe

Uninstalling TacoPost:

Delete the folder where you installed TacoPost using Explorer or deltree from the command line.
It's as easy as that!

Program Configuration:

TacoPost uses one simple INI file (in the same directory as the executable) to obtain all its paramters. To configure the program, you must simply edit the INI file with your favorite text editor and fill in your desired settings.

Here is an example INI file:

[Settings]  
HTML Filename=e:\web-stuff\dynamic-ip.html  
Site Name=web1-charles.thompson.com  
Username=frank  
Password=itsasecret  
Remote Directory=www

Explanation of parameters:

The first line of the INI file will always remain the same: [Settings]
The key "HTML Filename" holds the filename of the local file to modify and upload to the FTP site.
The key "Site Name" is the address of hte FTP site your to which your web page will be uplaoded
The key "Username" is the username that you use to log into the FTP site.
The key "Password" is the password you use to log into the FTP site.
The key "Remote Directory" is the directory on the FTP server in which your HTML file should be placed.

How the program works:

The program will parse an existing HTML file and will replace specific tags with various information about your login session. The modified version of your HTML file will be uploaded to an FTP site so that others may determine your dynamic IP address (and other information). The following list explains all possible tags and what they will be replaced with:

~~~IPPOST-i :: The numeric expression for your current IP address (ie 123.345.567.8)
~~~IPPOST-I :: The word expression for your current IP address (ie. ppp1.site.com)
~~~IPPOST-s :: The numeric expression for the PPP server you are currently attached to
~~~IPPOST-S :: The word expression for the PPP server you are currently attached to
~~~IPPOST-t :: The current time of day (24-hour/military format) (ie. 23:49:02)
~~~IPPOST-d :: The current date(ie 02/18/1997)

So, for example...let's say our HTML file looks like

<HTML>
  <HEAD>
    <TITLE>
      Here is my current location...made by TacoPost - The Dynamic IP Poster
    </TITLE>
  </HEAD>
  <BODY>
    <CENTER>
    My current location is<BR>
    ~~~IPPOST-I [~~~IPPOST-i]<BR>
    on server ~~~IPPOST-S [~~~IPPOST-s]<BR>
    at ~~~IPPOST-t on ~~~IPPOST-d<BR>
    </CENTER>
  </BODY>
</HTML>

The resulting page (as it would appear on your web site) might look like:

My current location is  
ppp-12.some-site.com [123.345.567.13]  
on server ppp.some-site.com [123.345.567.1]  
at 13:52:11 on 08/10/1998

Get it? It should be pretty simple. Tags can be repeated and can be included in any part of the document. This feature allows you to post your IP address to any web page, in any format type.

Downloads

As promised, TacoPost is small and will only take about a minute to download! The full FREEWARE program is online for you to download and begin using immediately.

tacopost.zip - [130,750 bytes] This file currently only contains the executable and ini file template...sorry no docs yet!

Because this program is FREEWARE and I will never make any profits from it, I will readily send full source code (Visual C++, DevStudio 97) to anybody who requests it. Just drop me some email and I'll send it to you.

Future changes/modifications

The following is a list of future modifications that I plan on implementing when I get around to it. If you have any additional suggestions that you would like to see implemented, please drop me some email.

Command line parameter for program setup - using dialog to write INI file
Encode password so that it is not stored as plaintext. Note: I know that it is a really bad idea to store your password _anywhere_as plaintext...and I'm working on a solution to this problem. Most likely I will either use the system registry and/or encode the password before reading/writing.
Allow for multiple upload locations and/or .HTML files
Double check for memory leaks
More error checking and allow program to be canceled

Revision History

2/28/99 - Fixed bug with program crash when invalid FTP site information (user/pass). Program now shuts down somewhat gracefully when invalid FTP information is given.