Execute method

Executes blocking method and waits until completed.

Type

String.

Remarks

This method is only available in COM version of the component.

Execute method will send command of your choice to the server, and wait until it is completed. If it does not return in specified time, timeout error is generated.

There's no general way of knowing what to expect from command to return once you execute it, so you must use Prompt argument to specify what to expect to be received after last line of the command. Most usually, this will be your command prompt, but depending on the command you execute, it can be something else - meaningful to you.

NOTE: this method works only when Blocking property is set to True.

Common way for using Execute method is to send few commands sequentially, waiting for each to return something and probably make a decision on what to do next. Without usage of Execute method, you would need some complicated algorithms - so Execute comes here to help. Don't forget to put CRLF (vbCrLf) sequence at the end of your command, since wodTelnetDLX will not do that for you (we never know if you actually want it).

Typically, you might want to use it like this:

and it will do the following - connect to the server, wait everything until prompt is received (I assume here that joe@debian is prompt that is expected to be received), and then change directory to /tmp and list all files.

Good thing is that if Execute method fails, you will still be able to Receive complete data arrived in the meantime, Received event will be fired to notify you to do that, just to let you know why it failed.

Timeout can be specified as negative value. When set up this way, wodTelnetDLX will use it as 'absolute timeout' - component will return from Execute method call in specified time no matter if it was idle or busy in that time. It is like that to prevent wodTelnetDLX from freezing if expected response is never received. wodTelnetDLX.Timeout property will still hold regular, 'inactivity timeout' value as it was before. One sidenote - it is almost impossible to predict what state of the session will be when this 'absolute timeout' expires. You may still receive big amount of data that will confuse your client, depending on what was going on while Execute method was running.

This command internally disables PromptReceived event and Received event since it's taking control on what's received from the server.

You can also provide regular expression to be searched in received data instead of exact value. You should prepend your Execute argument with regex: text so wodTelnetDLX knows you are using regular expression. For example, you can use it like this:

above regular expression will match when:

• $, %, #, or > found
• space
• end of line

typically, our previous sample joe@somehost:-$<SPACE> does match above regex. But, hey, feel free to use something more complex such as:

or using extended PERL syntax

just don't forget to put regex: text in front of regular expression, otherwise wodTelnetDLX will search for exact match of specified pattern. PCRE (www.pcre.org) library is used for regex support.