Hi Folks,
I finally figured out what's causing this error from the DX4WIN Data
Updater. Only a few people have reported seeing it:
UPDATE\dx4win.php is not a JSON file
It means exactly what it says it means. Because it happened to me
today, I was able to diagnose the problem. It's a long-ish story, but
the executive summary is:
1. The Updater is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
2. If you saw this error, you will not see it again.
Leo, IZ5FSA maintains the 425 DX News calendar:
http://www.425dxn.org/index.php?op=wcal
He makes a version of this calendar available that can be used by
DX4WIN. In the past, the calendar he provided was text-based. It
looked something like this:
13/02/2016 00:00:00,21/02/2016 23:59:59,V31YN: Belize
13/02/2016 00:00:00,23/02/2016 23:59:59,5V7TH: Togo
13/02/2016 00:00:00,24/02/2016 23:59:59,XW4XR: Laos
After the Updater downloaded the calendar, the user had to manually
import it into DX4WIN. I believe the name was something like
calendar.txt.
Somewhere along the line, the name of the downloaded file became
dx4win.php, but it was still in text format. Remember this for later.
In early 2016, Leo began offering the calendar in JSON format. It was
first used by version 8.01 of the DX4WIN Data Updater:
"JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable
format for structuring data.
It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web
application, as an alternative to XML."
The calendar in JSON format was downloaded into a file called
calendar.php, which was used by the DX4WIN Data Updater to update the
calendar inside DX4WIN. The user no longer had to import it into
DX4WIN by hand.
Recently, Leo moved the calendar from his personal web server to the
425 DX News web server. In this process of this change, the name of
the file that the Updater downloaded changed again, this time (back)
to dx4win.php. This also resulted in the release of version 9.4 of
the DX4WIN Data Updater.
Here is where the problem occurs. People who used an earlier version
of the DX4WIN Data Updater downloaded a text version of the calendar
into a file named dx4win.php, which is stored in the UPDATE directory.
Today, the Updater is downloading a file with this same name, but in
JSON format, to a temporary directory. The Updater compares the old
and new calendars to see if they are different. It compares the
newly-downloaded calendar from the temporary directory, with the
previous one that is in the UPDATE directory. If you were using an
old version of the updater, you may have an old dx4win.php file in
text format. So the Updater is trying to compare the new JSON-format
calendar with the old TEXT-format calendar. This cause the pop-up
error message. When the error occurs, the Updater decides the old
calendar in the UPDATE directory is no good, and replaces it with the
one it just downloaded. So the error will not occur again.
Sorry for the inconvenience. At least I understand the problem now,
and know that it is *not* with the 425 DX News website or the Updater.
73 - Jim AD1C
--
Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreis...@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us
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