Develop Reference

Finding text from webpage using javascript

I am tring to make a script but I can't really find a solution.
I'm trying to find a string from a website. Hard part here is that I can't use
document.documentElement.innerHTML.search("string")
Since I can't do it locally, I want to use something like this:
var link = "myweb.com"
link.documentElement.innerHTML.search("string")
At the moment, my script generates the link, opens it and closes it: I just need to search the webpage for the word "error."

Javascript run inside of a client's browser won't actually be able to retrieve another website's html for you (unless it is a different page on your own website). You may want to read about the Same-Origin Policy.
You can, however, use javascript as a language to do what you want - just not running inside of a browser. You can use something called Node.js, which is simply a program you can use to run javascript outside of a browser.
What it really boils down to is that if you want to scrape another website (which is the term for what you are trying to do), you typically need to make a scraper that runs on a server, and not a browser.
To be complete, a (probably shady) way to scrape another website is to:
Have your server-side code fetch another website's conents
Use AJAX to pass the contents to a client's browser
Have the client do all of the processing
Optionally send the scraped information back to your server
Here is a good article on scraping with nodeJS.

if you need it just to work on your computer, you can make a userscript that will do this easily. If you want it to work as part of a hosted website, you need a server side solution

Create ActiveXObject on *server*

I have created a little html stub that allows a user to compare various spellers. I would like to include the Word speller and I have written code in a .js file to create an ActiveXObject thus:
var wordApp = new ActiveXobject("Word.Application");
This works fine on my local machine but I get the dreaded 'Automation server can't create object' error when I try it on other machines. I have searched and read the various articles on the topic and I understand that what I am trying to do is very,very bad, not safe, doesn't work on any browser than IE, and so on. This is for an internal test app in a trusted environment and all I want is for others to be able to access the page and see the result without forcing them to make extreme changes to their security settings.
So, here is my question. Is there a way that I can get this to run server side on my machine running IIS and hosting the website? Ideally I would like to be able to insert my HTML into an aspx file and, when the submit button is pushed, have it either run all the javascript on server side or at least run the portion that calls the activeX code. If this isn't feasible, can I migrate the specific functions that call the activeX and get the data to C# or VB and still run the safer functions in JS?
Thanks for your advice!

How to test if an employee is connected via VPN with client-side JavaScript

There are employees that will visit the external site to see a link to an internally hosted site. We only want the link to show if they have VPN'd into the network.
How, with JavaScript, can I test the availability of something that isn't online externally.
I have attempted to use a .JS file but it can get cached and seem available when it really isn't. Same with an image.
Maybe JSONP with MockJax to avoid cross-site scripting errors?

On the intranet site make a JS file that will either embed the links or change them from display: none to display: block (or whatever display). On the page itself simply create a reference to that script and append the current date time to the end to avoid caching from the server.
Test case (this assumes you have localhost set up, but you can change it to be whatever intranet location):
Go here and the text won't be displayed.
Set up a file called test.js under localhost with the contents
$(function(){
$('#test').show();
});
refresh the page and it will display the DIV's contents.

Open local html file in current window with Javascript Bookmarklet

I'm trying to build a sample bookmarklet to grab current webpage source code and pass it to a validator. Validator is not a an online website, but a folder with bunch of javascript and html files. I'm trying to open file:///C:/Users/Electrifyings/Desktop/Validator/Main.html file with the help of javascript bookmarklet code and put the source code in the textarea in the newly opened window, but it is not working for some reasons that I'm not aware of.
Here is the sample code with algorithm:
javascript:(function(){var t = document.body.innerHTML;window.open('file:///C:/Users/RandomHero/Desktop/test.html',_self);document.getElementById("validator_textarea")=t;})()
Here are the steps:
Grab current web page source code in a variable.
Open locally stored HTML web page in current or new window or new tab (either way is fine with me, but no luck)
Put the source code from the variable into the validator textarea of the newly opened HTML file.
I have tried above code with a lot of variations, but got stuck on the part where it opens the new window. Either it's not opening the new window at all or it is opening blank window without loading the file.
Would love to get some help with this issue, thanks a lot.
Oh and btw,
Windows 7 x64, Tried IE, Firefox and Chrome. All latest and stable builds. I guess it's not a browser side issues, but something related to javascript code not opening the URI with file:/// protocol. Let me know if any more details are needed. :)

You wouldn't want a webpage you visit to be able to open up file://c:/Program Files/Quicken/YourSensitiveTaxInfo right? Because then if you make a mistake and go to a "bad" website (either a sleazy one or a good one that's been compromised by hackers), evil people on the intarweb would suddenly have access to your private info. That would suck.
Browser makers know this, and for that reason they put VERY strict limits to prevent Javascript code from accessing files on a user's local computer. This is what is getting in the way of your plan.
Solutions?
build the whole validator in to the bookmarklet (not likely to work unless it's really small)
put your validator code up on the web somewhere
write a plug-in (because the user has to choose to install a plug-in, they get much more freedom than webpages ... even though for Firefox, Chrome, etc. plug-ins are basically just Javascript)
* * Edit * *
Extra bonus solution, if you don't limit yourself to a purely-client-side implementation:
Have your bookmarklet add a normal (HTML) form to the page.
Also add an iframe to the page (it's ok if you hide it with CSS styling)
Set the form's target attribute to point to the iframe. This will make it so that, when the user submits the form and the server replies back to that submission, the server's reply will go to the (hidden) iframe, instead of replacing the page as it normally would.
Add a file input to your form - you won't be able to access the file within that input using Javascript, but that's ok because your server will be doing the accessing, not your bookmarklet.
Write a server-side script which takes the form submissions, reads the file that came with it, and then parrots that file back as the response. In other words, you'll have a URL that you can POST to, and when it sees a file in the POST's contents, it will respond back with the contents of that file.
Now that you've got all that the user can pick their validator file using the file input, upload it to your server, your server will respond back with the file it just got, and that file will appear as the contents of the iframe.
And now that you finally have the file that you worked so hard to get (inside your iframe) you can do $('#thatIframe').html() and viola, you have access to your file. You can save the current page's source and then replace the whole page with that uploaded file (and then pass the saved page source back to the new validator page), or you can do whatever else you want with the contents of the uploaded validator file.
Of course, if the file doesn't vary from computer to computer, you can make all of that much simpler by just having a server that sends the validator file back; this could be a pure Apache server with no logic whatsoever, as all it would have to do is serve a static file.
Either way though, if you go with this approach and your new file upload script is not on the same server as your starting webpage, you will have a new security problem: cross-domain script limitations. However, these limitations are much less strict than local file access ones, so there are ways to work around them (JSONP, cross-site policy files, etc.). There are already tons of great Stack Overflow posts explaining these techniques, so I won't bother repeating them here.
Hope that helps.

Client side scripting to make changes in a file

Is there any client-side script that would be able to make changes to a file on the hosts computer? (Intention stated below)
I am creating a packaged app for chrome which can show some online data, and make it available even when offline.
There is a certain thing, for e.g. 'a webpage' i want to show/store (but i cannot get/read its contents due to it being on different origin). To show when online, i can use iframe, but am unable to preserve it for offline.
So i thought i could make an appcache (manifest within the application package) which will cache the file, and on press of an update button a script would run which would make some change to the manifest which would force the cached resource to be reloaded.
I searched a lot, but no results.
Any suggestions as to how it can be done. Or any other way to get it to work?

I don't think so. This could be a huge security problem if it existed.
If you had to, you could send an ajax request to the server to create a file it creates with the current prices, and add it to the appcache file.

Here is a link to another SO quesitob that has a list of APIs you could use to get your stock price.
Webservice to get stock quotes?