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 control 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.
The following properties, methods and events are available for
use by your application:
Initialize
Initialize the control and load the Windows Sockets library for the
current process. This method is normally not used if the control is
placed on a form in languages such as Visual Basic. However, if the
control is being created dynamically using a function similar to
CreateObject, then the application must call this method to
initialize the component before setting any properties or calling
any other methods in the control.
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session is no longer valid.
Uninitialize
Unload the Windows Sockets 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.