Question

I have an application that runs on a server under Solaris. This application exports some editable configuration data in CSV format. The preferred way to edit the data is to use Microsoft Excel. Due to the differences in platforms, the current workflow is comprised of the following steps:

1. dumping the data into a CSV file on the server
2. ftp/sftp/scp the file to the Windows machine
3. edit the data on Windows in Excel
4. ftp/sftp/scp the file back to the server box
5. import the data into the server

I’m looking for a way to simplify the workflow and possibly doing everything from Excel. I know I could set up a full-blown web-server with CGI support to interface between HTTP on one end and export/import scripts on the server. Or I could run an in-process web-server that would serve the configuration data as if it was a file, and then it could take the input back from Excel and handle it.

My difficulty is that I do not know how exactly Excel pushes the file back if it was open over HTTP. Is it as simple as a POST method with some arguments? Or do I need to support a full set of WebDAV methods to accept the input from Excel?

Thank you,
/Sergey

Answer 1

Windows has an API for downloading files (URLDownloadToFile), if you provide the URL. You could write a VBA macro that downloads the file, does your edits, then pushes the file (via FTP) back to your server.

For reference:

• Use the URLDownloadToFile API function to download a file from a URL into a file
• Use the Internet Transfer Control to upload a file to the Web