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billwharton

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proxy.pac syntax configuration

I want to basically use the proxy for everything excepting about 20 sites like microsoft.com and google.com ... How do i accomplish this? As you can see below, i do have microsoft.com listed but how do I add additional sites? I don't want to be creating 20 else & return statements. I tried different combinations using the + sign after microosft.com but nothing seems to work



function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
    {
        if (isPlainHostName(host) || dnsDomainIs(host, ".mydomain.com"))
            return "DIRECT";

        else if (shExpMatch(host, "*.microsoft.com"))
            return "DIRECT";

        else if (shExpMatch(host, "*.com"))
            return "PROXY myproxy.net:8080;"

        else if (shExpMatch(host, "*.edu"))
            return "PROXY myproxy.net:8080; " +
                   "PROXY myproxy.net:8080";
        else
            return "PROXY myproxy.net:8080;"
    }
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sreerao

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Avatar of billwharton
billwharton

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Thanks for your answer. Is it actually possible to put in a javascript statement which simply refers to a text file for a list of allowed websites? I could keep adding to this list of websites simply in notepad.
Avatar of giltjr
I don't think Javascript can read files, but what about

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
  if (isPlainHostName(host) ||
      dnsDomainIs(host, ".mydomain.com")  ||
      shExpMatch(host, "*.microsoft.com"))
      return "DIRECT";
  else
     return "PROXY myproxy.net:8080" ;
 }
giltjr - What is your script trying to do? Are you simply answering my original question with your script?
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I would like appreciate if someone could figure out how can I get javascript to refer to a plain text file. I'm sure it's possible as javascript has become quite evolved in the past few years.
I will look around more, but i don't think it can and most likely never will.

Eventhough Javascript has evloved over the last few years, part of the reason it is considered much more secure that ActiveX, .NET, and Java is that is has no access directly access to files.  It only has access to what is within a Web page.  Javascript it not a "true" programming language, but a language that allows you to manuplate data within Webpage.  However for the same reasons it is considered more secure, it is also more restrictive and less robust of a language.
Hi Billwharton,
I do agree with giltjr, javascript cannot read files of the system, but perhaps you can script it so that you can "include" the reference to a server file.
BTW, what proxy server are you running?
-Sree
I have search and maybe you can search some more, but javascript can't directly read a file.

What it can do is "scan data" in a web page or scan data that is read by something else, like ActiveX.  The web page can be an form of a html file or and xml file.

Here is a link that gives an example of activeX and javascript reading a text file and displaying it as table.


http://www.codetoad.com/tabular_data_control.asp

Again, javascript is NOT a real programming language.  It is, by design, something to allow you to manulate web pages, which is not what you want to do.

What enviroment are you planning to do this in?  If you are total MS enviroment you can control IE's proxy settings through GPO and the IEAK.  If you using another browser, well your only option is autoproxy config files.
sreerao

it's squida
Hi Billwharton,
You have a very good request. Perhaps you can consider this approach. Instead of writing Javascript to read some file that has a list of disallowed URLs, try considering a CGI script (using Perl or other language) and then output the results as the proxy.pac file. By using CGI script you can pretty much do what you want. It can read a list from the file (stored on the server) and then output the proxy.pac dynamically.
There are considerable examples on how to write CGI using Perl to output proxy.pac files. I presume this is a Linux box? Even if it is not, CGI's will be easy to deploy. I know why you mentioned about the Javascript reading a file for the list of URLs. Well, even though proxy.pac is nothing but a javascript file, the commands that you can use in proxy.pac is very limited.
I am not a guru on Perl, but if you want, I can post some preliminary outline of the script.

-Sree
Sree, good idea, but my personal opinion is that is a bit of work to get around adding a single line to a file.

The browser must have access to the proxy.pac file when it starts.  Which means that the proxy.pac file need to be there when I lanuch the browser.  That I am aware you can't through a program tell the browser to reload the proxy.pac file.

He may be able to create a CGI script that will read a text file and then create the proxy.pac file based on that, but the proxy.pac will not be reading the text file.  Now if he does get something setup to dynmically create the proxy.pac, he need to get the browser to reload the proxy.pac.  Which again, I don't think you can do through any client side scripting.  The user would need to manaully reload the proxy.pac file, either stop and restart the browser or in mozilla based browers go into options/perferences and go like they were going to configure proxy setting and click on reload.  For IE at a minumun you have to uncheck and recheck the use autoproxy config file.  However you may hae to uncheck save the setting, reopen and re-check the use autoproxy config, or just close and re-open IE.

 

everybody

thank you. Sree - you brought about great points but I am going to stick with simply using the proxy.pac file to add host/URL names
I see your point giltjr, that is always an issue even if billwharton manually edits the proxy.pac files to add the new URLs. The reloading issue was the first thing that came to my mind, but then it would be a issue with manually editing the proxy.pac file to add the URL list. But the whole idea is to have the proxy.pac file itself as a perl script, which would execute everytime the browser sends a URI request. Anyhow, since the author has preferred the manually adding to the proxy.pac files, I will not post any comments, unless you folks want the perl script method.
Thanks Bill for the points.
-Sree
sree

if it's not too much effort, please post the perl script. Only if it's ready (i don't want you to spend time writing it up)

Thx
Actually you may be on to something.  I have not tried this, in fact I just found it, but:

     http://japc.sourceforge.net/intro.shtml

Is a Java based server side autoproxy managment program.  You use a XML formated file to manage your proxy config list.  You point your browser to:

    http://localhost:8080/AutoProxy/proxy.jsp


Of couse changing what you need for your site.  The interesting point is that you don't need to point it to a .pac file, which I always thought you had to do.  I don't know what it response with, I would assume a valid autoproxy pac file.  So, I would assume that if Sree has a Perl script that can create a .pax file from a plain text file that you could code:

     http://yourwebserver/cgi-bin/proxy.pl

or something like that.  Then the users get what ever was current when they started their browser.
Wonderful find giltjr
I have multiple options to achieve what I want to.

Thx again
Hi Billwharton,
I don't have the script ready off hand, but as soon as I find some spare CPU cycles, I will throw in the code here.
-Sree
Hi Billwharton,
I am not sure what OS you are running the proxy on, but here is a small script written in perl. Just copy and paste this code as proxy.pac file and then make this file as a cgi-script under your webserver/proxy server. I didn't have all the proxy.pac code, but hope you can understand the basic theme. I tried it on my local desktop with a local perl interpreter, but it should work for Unix too. (Just make sure you have the first line modified to point it to the Perl binary (for Unix only)).

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Please change the line above to reflect your path to Perl binary (Unix)
# For this to work, your web server needs to know that the proxy.pac is a CGI script.
# Start generating the proxy.pac file
print <<"EOI";
Content-type: application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig

 if (isPlainHostName(host)
        ||  dnsDomainIs(host, ".mydomain.com")
        ||  shExpMatch(host, "*.microsoft.com")
EOI
#Process the file containing the list of domains to be blocked.
#Provide the filename where you stored the list of domains to be blocked.
$filename = "C://nohosts.txt";
#Open the file and see if it does open properly.
open (EXAMPLE, "<$filename") || die ("Could not open file <br> $!");
$name = <EXAMPLE>;
#Loop through the file till the end
while ($name){
         $name =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;
         print " || shExpMatch (host, \"*.$name\")";
         $name = <EXAMPLE>;
         print "\n";
         }
#Close the file.
close (EXAMPLE);
#Just output without any processing. End of Interrupt/input.
print <<"EOI";
          )
        { return "DIRECT"; }
    return "PROXY myproxy.net:8080" ;

EOI


Cheers.
-Sree