Making Outbound Connections from a Hosted Domain - Hosting

If your site needs to connect to an external address, your code will need to make use of our proxy server, as our web servers use a firewall to limit outbound connections. Our proxy server is available at:

Address: proxy.web.westnet.com.au
Port: 3128

There are a number of ways to do this in your code:

PHP

If you're on our Linux web servers, you will need to use PHP:

<?php
	function proxy_url($url, $post_data=NULL, $debug=0)
	{
       	$ch = curl_init();
		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, "http://proxy.web.westnet.com.au:3128");
		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

		if ($debug)
		{
			curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
		}
		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
		curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 120);

		if ($post_data != NULL)
		{
			$o="";
			foreach ($post_data as $k=>$v)
			{
				$o.= "$k=".utf8_encode($v)."&";
			}
			$post_data=substr($o,0,-1);
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
			curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
		}
		else if ($debug)
		{
			echo "\n<br>\$postdata was not array: $post_data<br>\n";
		}

		$result = curl_exec ($ch);

		if ($debug)
		{
			echo "<pre>";
			print_r(curl_getinfo($ch));
			print_r(curl_error($ch));
			echo "</pre>";
		}

		curl_close($ch);
		return $result;
	}


/* TEST EXAMPLE */
	//VARIABLES
	$url_page = "http://www.google.com/"; // set to Required URL

	$post_data = array(
		"key1"=>"value1",
		"key2"=>"value2"
	); //set key/value pairs for post

	$debug = 1;

	//CALLING THE FUNCTION - Google will error with POST data as it does not accept POST requests - but this is an example ONLY
	//POST request (normal use)
	$string = proxy_url($url_page, $post_data);

	//GET request (normal use)
	//$string = proxy_url($url_page);

	//POST request (with debugging info)
	//$string = proxy_url($url_page, $post_data, $debug);

	//GET request (with debugging info)
	//$string = proxy_url($url_page, NULL, $debug);

	// print to output (ie display in browser)
	echo $string;
/**/
?>

ASP.NET

If you're on our Windows servers, you can do this using ASP.NET. In the web.config file, add the following lines:

<system.net>
  <defaultProxy>
  <proxy proxyaddress="http://proxy.web.westnet.com.au:3128" bypassonlocal="true"/>
  </defaultProxy>
</system.net>

Or do it in your code:

'Create the HttpWebRequest object
Dim req as HttpWebRequest = WebRequest.Create(URL)

'Create the proxy class instance
Dim prxy as New WebProxy("http://proxy.web.westnet.com.au:3128")

'Specify that the HttpWebRequest should use the proxy server
req.Proxy = prxy

Try
  'Get the data as an HttpWebResponse object
  Dim resp as HttpWebResponse = req.GetResponse()

  ... work with results ...
Catch wex as WebException
  ...
End Try

Classic ASP

You can also use classic ASP:

<%
Dim objWinHttp
Dim strHTML

Set objWinHttp = Server.CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")

' Set proxy details
objWinHttp.SetProxy "2","proxy.web.westnet.com.au:3128"

'  .Open(bstrMethod, bstrUrl \[, varAsync])
objWinHttp.Open "GET", http://exampledomain.com/index.html

' Send it on it's merry way.
objWinHttp.Send

' Print out the request status:
Response.Write "Status: " & objWinHttp.Status & " " _
            & objWinHttp.StatusText & "<br />"

' Get the text of the response.
strHTML = objWinHttp.ResponseText

' Trash our object now that we are finished with it.
Set objWinHttp = Nothing
%>

<h1>Here's the page:</h1>
<table border="1">
<tr><td>
<pre>
<%= Server.HTMLEncode(strHTML) %>
</pre>
</td></tr>
</table>

For more information regarding the above, please contact Westnet Domains at domains@westnet.com.au or call 1300 137 480 during business hours.