How to maxamize Networks and Files
Networks
There are two vanilla Network operations in Small Basic. They are Network.DownloadFile() and Network.GetWebPageContents() and are useful in their own ways.
Download File allows you to open up the world of always updating your application! You can download a file for example that contains an array that includes a program identifyer and a program version number. Your program would then check to see if there is a more recent version of the program and use Download file to apply the updates. Here is some example code:
You can use the dowload web page contents to fetch information stored on a website and use it in your program. This requires a lot of text mainuplation and may be better off if you used extensions to do these mainpulations. Warning: Do not use this function on a website too frequently or they might blacklist you.
Files
You probably already have experience with files and how to make and create them using Small Basic. We will cover some things you may have not known. If you currently do not know the power of File operations look into our recent blog on Recursive Proggraming and run the source code provided.
Here are some things you may have not know about file operations:
Arrays can be stored and retrived from files.
Read and Write Contents are signficantly faster than doing line by line operations. It is recommended to use Read and Write Content methods whenever possible.
