Any Eweb Users Out There

[TimWilborne 108]

Was just curious if there were any Eweb users on this forum. Just recently joined this forum looking for others to share ideas on the Eweb module with. Since its such a different product Rockwell isn't much help on it. Haven't found much on it but i have found lots of great information on other things here.

[Guest HalBishop]

We have been testing the EWEB module and have been able to develop some pages for the customer to access inventory screens and mill status from a remote PC. We have been using the toolkit distributed by Rockwell and it seems to work fairly well. I really want to use this module to allow data access from a PocketPC. This is my main interest in this module. PocketExplorer2003 however does not support XML. This is a problem. I am hoping Mobile5 will solve this problem (it is due to be released soon). Anybody else have any experience?

[TimWilborne 108]

For small pages couldn't you just use readlogixtags and writelogixtags. They don't require xml. we are working on a wireless palm pilot web page as we speak

[Guest HalBishop]

I didn't know you could do that. This is a good place to learn new things Thanks, I will give it a try.

[TimWilborne 108]

Post me on any good things you learn how to do with the Eweb if you can

[Contr_Conn 4]

It is not different product, just not too many people use it. Some people have very little idea that this module exists. Lack of available examples is direct result of just very rare use. This really powerfull tool requires good XML and Java skills, and regular control engineers don't have them. It is more computer programmer oriented. I think we will see more activity with EWEBs once people start using new Open Socket interface available in version 3.5 Edited 12 Oct 2005 by Contr_Conn

[TimWilborne 108]

What I mean by its such a different product is that it is more computer oriented. Rockwell tech guys are more Plc oriented. You call and ask them a question and most of them quickly get lost. I even had one guy tell me that it wasn't based on Plc programming so they didn't support it. That didn't go over too well. Your are right, xml and java programming skills allow you to do much more with the Eweb. But the lack of programming examples has kept many people from using the Xml method of reading and writing tags. Then they came out with that Eweb toolkit. In my opinion that was a waste of some engineers time. *************************Note**************************** Note for all of you who may have used the Xml example in the book and not been able to get it to work. Along with removing the line wraps and other things they note about copying and pasting the program sample into your editer with the new version of the user manual, there are two other things. One, I never could get it to work with Netscape. The other is that there is a problem pasting from adobe into some editers. The single quotes around the TEST tag are pasted in as single left quotes. This will not work on the web page, you must delete them and put single quotes in there place. After raising holy you know what with Rockwell, they emailed me a working sample, which for some reason they refuse to post on the knowledge base. After comparing the code line for line, I found it was identical to mine. After 4 hours of looking, I found the single left quotes. Once changing them to single quotes, the example out of the book works fine. I told Rockwell about this but they seem to left that note out of the users manual. We are working on printing with the open socket interface right now. Haven't quite got it perfected yet but it is looking very promising. Finally an end limited number of printers that you can use with a Plc. If you are using the Eweb module, just curious if you have ran into the "Failed to obtain target handle" flaw yet

[TimWilborne 108]

Got the eweb module to print to printer using the socket connection. Finally, an end to serial printers

[PlcLogix 0]

What is the easiest way to read and write tags to the 1756-EWEB module

[Contr_Conn 4]

PlcLogix: Welcome to the Forum! I did not undersatnd your question: Are you asking how to read and write Logix tags using EWEB module? - Answer is in the user manual ENET-UM527: You will have to create a webpage using HTML or JAVA to do it. EWEB will store this code and you browser (with EWEB support) will execute it. If you asking how Logix controller can read some data from the EWEB, then answer is - it is no possible. It is not designed for it. So give us a little more details on what you trying to do. Edited 23 Oct 2005 by Contr_Conn

[TimWilborne 108]

If the web page is simple, the easiest way is to use the ReadLogixTag method. If you are familiar with html programing just put <%ReadLogixTag("1,0", "TAGNAME", "DINT"); %> where you would normally have your static variable. Replace TAGNAME with the tag you want and DINT with you data type. If you use the XML method, see the not above on the single left quote

[PlcLogix 0]

Thank you for you answers. Good to know about the copy and paste problem of the example. That is why i couldn't get the XML example to work. Does the XML file have to be layed out in the same way as Rockwell does it for it to work or do you just have to have the xmlns statements in it?

[TimWilborne 108]

I have not been able to get it to work in any structure other than what Rockwell laid out. Thats not to say that it can't be done. Xml is very flexible though, what are you trying to do

[PlcLogix 0]

I am mainly looking for ways to navigate through the tags based on variables in the web page. Something similar to indirect addressing. And is there an easier way to load the xml files. Rockwell example is long and confusing. Or does someone have an expaination of what all of those lines in the example mean. I also cant get it to work with netscape

[TimWilborne 108]

I never could get the xml to work with netscape either. Maybe there are some netscape users out there who could help us with that. Or do like I did and say you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. I know thats not the most friendly approach but I'm not trying to lure customers off of the web in with the Eweb modules web pages and considering the alternative is to have a much more costly software package from Rockwell I don't think most people would mind. As for the Xml loader, here is a stripped down version of it that only works with IE 6.0 and does not alert you if it won't work. If you get the yellow error warning in the bottom left of the screen, it won't work. Sorry <script language="JScript"> var xmlDoc = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM"); xmlDoc.async = false; xmlDoc.load("/user/system/dataviews/DocumentName.xml"); var xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP"); function update_value() { xmlDoc.selectSingleNode("view/tag[@name=TagName]/value").childNodes[0].nodeValue = document.getElementById("TagValue").value; xmlhttp.Open("POST", "/user/system/dataviews/DocumentName.xml", false); xmlhttp.Send(xmlDoc); location.reload(true) } </script> Replace the DocumentName with the name of your Xml file and TagName with you tag name. Make sure you set proper privaliges on these files. As far is indirect addressing, a mixture of Xml and Asp is the easiest solution to this. Using all Xml allows you to do the most, but the example I will show takes the least amount of code and I feel is easier for a Plc programmer to understand. The Asp(ReadLogixTag) is executed inside the Eweb i guess. I'm not a web programmer so I don't know the proper terms. But Internet Explorer never sees them. So if we use an array called TagArray and want the 5th element, we would normally write this xmlDoc.selectSingleNode("view/tag[@name='TagArray[5]']/value").childNodes[0].nodeValue If we want to Indirectly address this array, we can create a tag called IndexPosition and do this xmlDoc.selectSingleNode("view/tag[@name='TagArray[<%ReadLogixTag("1,0", "IndexPosition", "DINT"); %>]']/value").childNodes[0].nodeValue The IndexPosition tag value is put in place of the 5 in the nonindexed example. Watch out for multidimensional arrays. When I wrote most of my pages the Eweb module would not work with these. A firmware update, can't remember which one, was suppose to fix this but I have never tried using multidimensional arrays in the Eweb since.

[TimWilborne 108]

In my reply above xmlDoc.selectSingleNode("view/tag[@name='TagArray[<%ReadLogixTag("1,0", "IndexPosition", "DINT"); %>]']/value").childNodes[0].nodeValue is a single line

[Contr_Conn 4]

Multidementional arrays fixed in FW rev 2.2 see http://support.rockwellautomation.com/cont...RN604E-EN-P.pdf

[controlsdude 3]

<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <script language="JavaScript"> </script> </head> <body > <form action="/rokform/WriteLogixTags" method="POST"> TEST: <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="/user/Web/writeOneTag.asp"> <input type="hidden" name="numtags" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="t_1_tagname" value="TEST"> <input type="hidden" name="t_1_slot" value="0"> <input type="hidden" name="t_1_type" value="DINT"> <input type="hidden" name="t_1_display" value="Decimal"> <input type="hidden" name="t_1_changed" value="1"> <input type="input" name="t_1_value" value="<%ReadLogixTag("1,0","TEST","DINT");%>"> <br><br> <form action="/rokform/WriteLogixTags" method="POST"> TEST1: <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="/user/Web/writeOneTag.asp"> <input type="hidden" name="numtags" value="2"> <input type="hidden" name="t_2_tagname" value="TEST1"> <input type="hidden" name="t_2_slot" value="0"> <input type="hidden" name="t_2_type" value="DINT"> <input type="hidden" name="t_2_display" value="Decimal"> <input type="hidden" name="t_2_changed" value="1"> <input type="input" name="t_2_value" value="<%ReadLogixTag("1,0","TEST1","DINT");%>"> <br><br> <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Set Value"> </form> </form> </body> </html> How come the second tag or t_2_* does not work? I can get the t_1_* tag to work but when I want to do more than one it chokes, crashes, .......

[Contr_Conn 4]

You should open new thread for this... see tn 49389 and please change your profile to show correct country Edited 18 Feb 2008 by Contr_Conn

[TimWilborne 108]

What does it do exactly when it chokes and crashes? I personally like the XML method compared to the WriteLogixTags