Creating a URL still exists page/util

Hi All

Quite familiar with ASP and JavaScript and wondered if there is a method out
there that allows me to create a web page util to see if URL links are still
valid.

In other words I've created a system whereby a user can add their own
links/urls page, but they want to periodically check whether all of these
links by executing a multi-check.

My theoretical thought on this would be that the script would check if it
receives a 404 on each page request and mark a flag if and when it gets it,
but as to how I would do this in ASP or JavaScript, I have no idea.

Have you seen anything like this before?

Thanks

Laphan

"Laphan" <info DeleteThis @SpamMeNot.co.uk> wrote in message
news:11r5hvoa1kbp753@corp.supernews.com...
> Hi All
>
> Quite familiar with ASP and JavaScript and wondered if there is a method
out
> there that allows me to create a web page util to see if URL links are
still
> valid.
>
> In other words I've created a system whereby a user can add their own
> links/urls page, but they want to periodically check whether all of these
> links by executing a multi-check.
>
> My theoretical thought on this would be that the script would check if it
> receives a 404 on each page request and mark a flag if and when it gets
it,
> but as to how I would do this in ASP or JavaScript, I have no idea.
>
> Have you seen anything like this before?
>
> Thanks
>
> Laphan

I'm quite sure you won't be able to do this with JavaScript.

You ought to be able to do it with ASP, but I'm not an ASP developer, and I
couldn't see any obvious links when I googled just now, but that probably
means I was using the wrong keywords to search on.

Something to consider: Why do this in ASP or JavaScript at all? Your basic
idea (of periodically checking links) is good (I do this on one of my
systems), but isn't this naturally an off-line activity? If you do this with
ASP it implies that it is being done in response to a web page request (and
waiting until you've verified the links before generating the page will be
very very slow.) If you treat it as an offline activity (i.e. one which is
done independently of any page requests) then you can use any programming
language you like, and either use the WinInet library or generate a direct
socket connection to get the server response.

So, excellent idea, but (personally) I think you're considering the wrong
tools.
--
Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian