:confused; I need to be able to track who has taken the cbt. I have created a
sign-on application to have Authorware store user information to text file. If
I understand correctly, when a user signs on, authorware writes the information
to the text file. I have tested it on my harddrive and it works fine.
However, when I publish the CBT and place it on our local server, it does
nothing, meaning the sign on script works fine, but no data is written to a
text file.
So the question really is, how do I get authorware to store user information
when the published file is the only thing that resides on the server? This is
also required in order to have authorware check for previous log-in records and
be able to return the user to the place where they left off in the CBT.
Any help would be appreciated. Please note I am not a programmer and my
technical skills come from reading step by step processes in a book...I have
followed the instructions on the creation of the sign-on screens but there is
no reference to how this works from a published file or what happens if the
published file resides on a server.

"forgeh" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:g5nns1$pmd$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> :confused; I need to be able to track who has taken the cbt. I have
> created a
> sign-on application to have Authorware store user information to text
> file. If
> I understand correctly, when a user signs on, authorware writes the
> information
> to the text file. I have tested it on my harddrive and it works fine.
> However, when I publish the CBT and place it on our local server, it does
> nothing, meaning the sign on script works fine, but no data is written to
> a
> text file.
> So the question really is, how do I get authorware to store user
> information
> when the published file is the only thing that resides on the server?
> This is
> also required in order to have authorware check for previous log-in
> records and
> be able to return the user to the place where they left off in the CBT.
> Any help would be appreciated. Please note I am not a programmer and my
> technical skills come from reading step by step processes in a book...I
> have
> followed the instructions on the creation of the sign-on screens but there
> is
> no reference to how this works from a published file or what happens if
> the
> published file resides on a server.

You'll need to look at a back end technology, such as ASP, ColdFusion, or
PHP. You could also use ftp.u32 to upload the file from the user's hard
drive to the server, but this is kind of buggy.

I am assuming you mean that there has to be some server side programing to
allow the writing of a text file to the server,which is not an option in my
situation. However, I loaded the authorware file onto the server and ran it
....and presto, it wrote the txt file on the server. So I believe the problem
to address is how do I get the published file to do that?

You don't mention whether this is a "Web server" that you get to through HTTP
or a file server that you get to through a network file share or mapped drive.
In the first case you will need some server side script to write the file. In
the latter case you can run the file from the server and use the FileLocation
variable to specify where the file is going to go.
WriteExtFile(FileLocation^"UserData.txt", "The stuff I want to write")
This will put the file in the location of the file that you're running, up on
the server, so anyone who runs that file from the same location will write to
the same file. The published file should be able to do this just as if it were
running on your machine.
Now... you have to worry about possibly reading and writing to the same file
at the same time unless you break the info up in different files with the
user's name or id or something to keep track of them. This is a common approach
for really simple data store. Usually people use a subfolder and user ids.
WriteExtFile(FileLocation^"UserData\\Student"^User ID^".txt", "the data")
The next step is most often a small database app, MS Access is quite common
for local data storage.

HTH
Mike
====================
Mike Baker
Adobe Community Expert
mike-baker at cox dot net

"forgeh" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:g5o2ne$7s2$1@forums.macromedia.com...
>I am assuming you mean that there has to be some server side programing to
> allow the writing of a text file to the server,which is not an option in
> my
> situation. However, I loaded the authorware file onto the server and ran
> it
> ...and presto, it wrote the txt file on the server. So I believe the
> problem
> to address is how do I get the published file to do that?

If you're accessing the server through HTTP protocol, the client machine
_cannot_ write to the server. If it could, there wouldn't be a website in
the world that could stay online for longer than about 10 seconds, because
hackers would get in there and take them all down. The _only_ ways to write
to the server is to either ask the server to do the writing (back end
technology) or file upload (ftp).

Hope this clarifies;

Amy

Hi Mike...Thanks for the response. The CBT is posted on our intranet site, so
you access it through HTTP. Given that access to server side scripting is out
of the question. I guess I'm done, unless there is some other way to have
logon information sent (possibly via an email) from the authorware piece to me.
If I could get it to do at least that, I could set up a database or
spreadsheet to capture the information.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hi Amy...thanks for your response. As you can see, although computer literate,
I am not really a techie...just a wannabe techie. Back end scripting is not an
option in my environment (government systems) so, I need to have a way to
capture who accesses the CBT. You mention FTP, can you elaborate a bit more.
Not sure how I would use this to capture the data avoiding back end scripting.

"forgeh" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:g5ql3u$4dq$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Hi Amy...thanks for your response. As you can see, although computer
> literate,
> I am not really a techie...just a wannabe techie. Back end scripting is
> not an
> option in my environment (government systems) so, I need to have a way to
> capture who accesses the CBT. You mention FTP, can you elaborate a bit
> more.
> Not sure how I would use this to capture the data avoiding back end
> scripting.

There's ShowMe in your Authorware program folder. I suspect, though, that
if it's a hard requirement to write to the server, they can't have thought
you'd accomplish it without server-side scripting. FTP.u32 is very buggy,
and I'd advise against using it.