Online or Offline ?

Hi all,

I'm trying to get the internet connection state, if the player's computer is online or offline. So I use the code above, but I always get the "Connected" message even if my modem is physically unplugged.

;**************************************

If CallDLL("url.dll","InetIsOffline")
Print "Not connected."
Else
Print "Connected!"
EndIf

WaitKey()

;**************************************

Could someone tell me what's wrong with my code ?
Thanks in advance,
Gui.

You could try creating a TCP connection or similar to a website address and if it succeeds it means the computer is online.

Also, with that code you may need to specify a bank to retrieve data from the DLL.

bnkData		= CreateBank( 4 )
Result		= CallDLL( "url.dll", "InetIsOffline", 0, bnkData )

;Call to DLL succeeded
If Result
	Connected = PeekInt( bnkData, 0 )
	If Connected = True
		Print "Connected!"
	Else
		Print "Not Connected."
	EndIf
Endif

FreeBank bnkData
bnkData = 0

That code is untested though and is only to give a rough idea of what you might need to do to retrieve the data you want.

You could also try using a userlib.

Thanks a lot Chris, but it doesn't work. Apparently, the DLL call fails, I don't have any print output (added a waitkey() at the bottom of the code).

Concerning a userlib, I don't know what it is, I'm a newbie ;-)

Could it be that your call to the dll is also failing and that is why it always returns false and displays the connected message?

Is this of any use?

; test for an internet connection


; userlibs
; **********************************
; .lib "wininet.decls"
; InternetCheckConnection%(Url$,Flags%,Reserved%):"InternetCheckConnectionA"
; **********************************

Const FORCE_CONNECTION = 1

url$="http://www.blitzbasic.com"

If InternetCheckConnection(url$, FORCE_CONNECTION, 0) = 0
	Notify "Connection NOT present"
Else
	Notify "Connection present"
End If

End

Yeah, it seems to work, thanks JimB !

Try OpenTCPStream. Check out the example in the Blitz Command Reference. It seems to work, I tested it by running the example with my cable modem on/off and got a "failed" message when it was turned off :)

Problems with trying to open a TCP connection are:

a) It's slow. If it's going to fail, it takes several long seconds to do so.

b) If the user is on dial-up, it will pop up the connection dialog.

c) If the website you try to connect to happens to be down at that moment, it'll say you aren't connected.

Userlib

.module "wininet.dll"
InternetGetConnectedState%( Description%, ReservedValue% )

Blitz

Function IsConnected%()
   Local ret% = 0
   Return InternetGetConnectedState( ret, 0 )
End Function

Im not 100% sure the Integer passing will work though. you might wonna change that to a type or bank.
This is the official signature of the function:

bool InternetGetConnectedState( out int Description, int ReservedValue )

Also, you might try GetSystemMetrics(SM_NETWORK) which apparently returns an odd number if the computer is online.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sysinfo/base/getsystemmetrics.asp