wwwoffle - A program to control the World Wide Web Offline Explorer.

wwwoffle -h | --help --version

wwwoffle -online [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -autodial [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -offline [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -fetch [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -config [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -dump [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -purge [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -status [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle -kill [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>]

wwwoffle [-o|-O] [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>] URL

wwwoffle [-d[<depth>] | -r[<depth>] | -R[<depth>]] [-g[Sisfo]] [-F] [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>] URL1 [URL2 [... URL]]

wwwoffle [-d[<depth>] | -r[<depth>] | -R[<depth>]] [-g[Sisfo]] [-F] [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>] file1 [file2 [... file]]

wwwoffle -post [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>] URL

wwwoffle -put [-p <host>[:<port>] | -c <config-file>] URL

wwwoffle controls the World Wide Web Offline Explorer proxy HTTP server.

The wwwoffle program is used to control the wwwoffled program, to tell it when the computer is online or offline, and which URLs to get and when to fetch them.

The control options are also available from the server on an interactive control web page at http://localhost:8080/control/.

The command line options available for the program are described below.

-h | --help

A help message is printed giving a brief description of the usage of the program.

--version

The version number of the program is printed.

-online

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server that the computer is online to the internet and that requests are to be fetched immediately.

-autodial

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server that the computer can become online to the internet if required for requests that are not already cached, but that pages that are in the cache do not require any netwrok access. This is intended for use with dial-on-demand systems (using diald for example).

-offline

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server that the computer is not online to the internet and that requests are to be cached until they are fetched later.

-fetch

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server to fetch all of the requests that have been cached. (The proxy server must be online for this to work.) The program will wait until all of the requests have been met before exiting.

-config

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server to re-read the configuration file.

-dump

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server to dump out the current program configuration. This is equivalent to the most recently read configuration file and the built-in default options.

-purge

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server that the cache is to be purged. The configuration file wwwoffle.conf(5) specifies the maximum age of the pages to keep. If a maximum cache size is specified then the oldest pages are deleted until the size is not exceeded.

-status

Request from the wwwoffled proxy server the current status of the program. The online or offline mode, the fetch and purge statuses, the number of current processes and their PIDs are displayed.

-kill

Tell the wwwoffled proxy server to exit cleanly at the next convenient point.

URL

The URL of a web page that is to be fetched. This is the same as using a browser and entering the URL if not already in the cache or pressing the refresh button in the index if it is in the cache.

file

The name of an HTML file that is to be parsed and the links in it are to be fetched as if the URLs had been specified on the command line.

-o

Fetch the specified URL (from the cache or request it if not already cached when offline, or get it when online) and output it on standard output. This is an easy way of getting an image out of the cache to be used in other programs. The contents of the ModifyHTML section of the configuration file are ignored and the unmodified data is output.

-O

Fetch the specified URL (from the cache or request it if not already cached when offline, or get it when online) and output it on standard output including the HTTP header. The contents of the ModifyHTML section of the configuration file are ignored and the unmodified data is output.

-F

Force the specified URLs to be refreshed. Without this option, the page will not be fetched unless newer than the version on the server.

-r[<depth>]

Causes the pages linked to by the specified URLs also to be fetched if they are on the same host. This recursion works for a number of links specified by the depth parameter, a depth of 0 means only the specified page, a depth of 2 means all linked pages and all links from them.

-R[<depth>]

The same as -r above, but it also works for links that are not on the same host.

-d[<depth>]

The same as -r above, but is limited to links in the same directory or a sub-directory.

-gS

Also fetches the stylesheets that are included in the specified URLs.

-gi

Also fetches the images that are included in the specified URLs.

-gf

Also fetches the frames that are included in the specified URLs.

-gs

Also fetches the scripts that are included in the specified URLs.

-go

Also fetches the objects that are included in the specified URLs.

-post

Create a request using the POST method, the data is read from stdin, and appended to the request. The user must ensure that the format of the data is valid for a POST request. Any of the characters '&', '=' or ';' that are not being used for their reserved purpose must be URL-encoded in the input, other characters will be URL-encoded.

-put

Create a request using the PUT method, the data is read from stdin and appended to the request.

-c <config-file>

Specifies the name of the configuration file that contains the server host name, port number and authorisation password. This is required for the -online, -offline, -fetch, -config and -purge options if a password is set. The user must have read access to the configuration file to be able to use the command if a password is set. (See the StartUp and LocalHost section of wwwoffle.conf(5) for more information on setting the server host name, ports and password.)

-p <host>[:<port>]

Sets the hostname and port number that is to be ued for the connection to the proxy server. For the -online, -offline, -fetch, -config and -purge option this must be the WWWOFFLE daemon port, for the url options it must be the http proxy server port. If no -p option is specified then the compiled in defaults are used.

When the -F , -R[<depth>] , -r[<depth>] , -d[<depth>] or -g[Sisfo] options are given then they will override the options that are set in the FetchOptions section of the configuration and not fetch any other contents of the specified URL. For example if the fetch options normally include images and frames then using the -gi option will only fetch images and not frames. All page contents to be fetched must be specified as command line options. Specifying -g without any options will fetch only the specified URL without any of the options.

The WWWOFFLE_PROXY environment variable can be used instead of the -c or -p options. There are three ways that the variable can be used.

1.

When the variable is set to absolute pathname of a file, then that file is used as the configuration file like the -c option (for example /etc/wwwoffle/wwwoffle.conf).

2.

The WWWOFFLE_PROXY variable can also be set to the hostname and the port number as would be used with the -p option (for example localhost:8080).

3.

The third possibility is to set the variable to the hostname and the two port numbers for the HTTP proxy port and the WWWOFFLE control port (for example localhost:8080:8081). This way it will work with both types of command (proxy access and control).

wwwoffled(8), wwwoffle.conf(5), diald(8).

Andrew M. Bishop 1996,97,98,99,2000,01,02,03 (amb@gedanken.demon.co.uk)