The Finger protocol is used to return information about a user on a remote server, as well as general information about the server itself. The class provides an interface for connecting to a server, requesting information about a user and returning that information to the program. The Finger protocol is sometimes used in conjunction with internal e-mail applications, as well as a general information tool for corporate intranets. Finger servers are most commonly found on UNIX based servers, but implementations are available for the Windows platform as well.
Initialize
Initialize an instance of the class, loading the networking library
and validating the development license. This method must be called
before any properties are changed or any other methods in this
class are called by the application.
Connect
Connect to the remote host, using either a host name or IP address.
An optional argument to the Connect method is the name of
the user that you wish to obtain information about. If this
argument is omitted, then the value of the UserName property
will be used instead, and this property should be set prior to
calling Connect.
Read
Read the data returned by the server, storing it in a string
variable or byte array that is specified by the caller. This will
contain the information about the user requested when the
connection was established. Note that the data returned will
typically be text, however it may not follow the same end-of-line
conventions as Windows. For example, if the server is a UNIX or
Linux system, the end-of-line may be indicated by a single
linefeed, rather than a carriage-return/linefeed pair. Your
application will have to account for this if the data is being
displayed as-is to a user.
Disconnect
Disconnect from the server and release the memory allocated for
that client session. After this method is called, the client
session is no longer valid.
Reset
Reset the internal state of the component. This can be useful if
your application wishes to discard any settings made by a user and
return that instance of the class to its default state.
Uninitialize
Unload the networking library and release any resources that have
been allocated for the current process. This is the last method
call that the application should make prior to terminating. This is
only necessary if the application has previously called the
Initialize method.