Writing to a text file on a web-server with Visual Basic - php

Question

I am working on a project where I have a simple conveyor program done in Visual Basic. I have a button on a website which when pressed writes a "1" into a text file via a simple PHP server program. The VB conveyor system monitors the text file and if it has the value of "1" the conveyor stops. I then have a reset button on the VB program that when pressed should write a "0" into the text file and allow the conveyor to restart. I was able to get the VB program to monitor the text file, and it works accordingly, but I can't get the reset button to write the "0" into the text file.
The code that reads the file is:
Dim remoteStatus As New WebClient()
Dim data = remoteStatus.DownloadString("http://www.users.wfleitz.com/fleitzwc/example.txt")
Console.WriteLine(data)
Console.Read()
Dim remoteEnable As Boolean
If data.Trim = "0" Then
remoteEnable = True
ElseIf data.Trim = "1" Then
remoteEnable = False
Else
remoteEnable = False
End If
The code I have been trying to use to write to the text file is:
Private Sub PushButton1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles PushButton1.Click
Dim resetEvent As New WebClient()
Dim textAddress As String = "http://www.users.miamioh.edu/fleitzwc/example.txt"
Dim resetCommand As String = "0"
Dim resetArray As Byte() = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(resetCommand)
Dim resetStream As Stream = resetEvent.OpenWrite(textAddress, resetCommand)
resetStream.Write(resetArray, 0, resetArray.Length)
resetStream.Close()
End Sub
One other thing that i was thinking about, was rather than have the VB program write to the text file, have it talk to the PHP file that contains the code for the website, and have it send the "0" value. I didn't know if that would be cleaner or not.
If anyone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance,
Wfleitz

Answer 1

What I would do in your case is use PHP as you said.
<?php
/*
Upload this to http://www.users.miamioh.edu/fleitzwc/script.php or something like that.
Do either
http://www.users.miamioh.edu/fleitzwc/script.php?bar=get or
http://www.users.miamioh.edu/fleitzwc/script.php?bar=reset
*/
$foo = $_GET['bar'];
if ($foo=="get"){
echo file_get_contents("example.txt");
}
if ($foo=="reset"){
file_put_contents("example.txt","0");
}
This should work finely for what you are doing. It is somewhat incomplete though because I didn't fully pay attention to the details of the question but I think you are able to modify it to work with your needs. If not, I can update it.