On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:53:32 -0400 Douglas Kline wrote: > If I've got this straight, if there were an error-handler built into > the Web site, ColdFusion's response would be to call that > error-handler and the reason we got the error message we did and that > htdig couldn't process it is that there was no such error-handler and > ColdFusion's default reaction for such an eventuality wasn't > comprehensible to htdig.
I'm not sure you understand the process yet. Htdig will read whatever the remote site sends. The output was perfectly comprehensible, it consisted of a number of english words, plus a few acronyms, inside an HTML page (somewhat badly formed, but recognisable). Htdig has no way to know whether what is sent is an error or the intended page, so it indexes whatever arrives. > If there were a site-wide error-handler, would htdig have been able to > process its response? How would htdig's behavior at such a point be > determined? Htdig would receive whatever error messages the site thought fit and index them. Quite possibly the message would be along the lines of "Don't like your browser, get another." Still not very useful for your purposes. > The definition of user_agent as "Mozilla/4.0 (htdig 3.2.b5)" in > htdig.conf fixed the situation for us. Since ColdFusion's response to > you was that their product doesn't define or require a definition of > user_agent, what do they mean by, "This value is provided as a > ColdFusion variable"? Coldfusion incorporates some sort of procedural language, like PHP, Perl, Python, bash and so on. The implementor of the site can write in that language whatever they like, within its restrictions. Any useful information that came in the HTTP request will be available as built-in variables. It would seem that remote-site are trying to establish the capabilities of the client's browser, and making a mess of it. > Does that mean that ColdFusion gives user_agent a value of its own if > user_agent isn't already defined? I have no idea what Coldfusion does for an undefined user-agent, but that's irrelevant because the htdig spider has a default, so it _was_ defined to Coldfusion. > Does defining user_agent as I did after your earlier response in > htdig.conf have the effect of preventing ColdFusion from otherwise > defining the variable and also of preventing interpretation of .cfm > files by ColdFusion? No. Without your definition of the user_agent the default was used, which is "htdig". The .cfm _was_ interpreted. The .cfm tried to use the value of user_agent for something and failed because the implementor believed that all browsers are some variant of Mozilla. An error was returned. The base Coldfusion product did exactly what it was supposed to. The fault lies with the _implementor_ of the site. Mike -- Mike Causer Email - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG KeyID 1C2DDA07 WWW - http://www.mikecauser.org Flood the fen again! - Wicken Fen enlargement - http://www.wicken.org.uk ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _______________________________________________ ht://Dig general mailing list: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ht://Dig FAQ: http://htdig.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html List information (subscribe/unsubscribe, etc.) https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/htdig-general
