JP2004173116A - Repeater - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve a problem wherein a client frequently becomes a state in which the client waits for an answer from the outside during the acquisition session for a webpage. <P>SOLUTION: The client 12 transmits to a repeater 100 e-mail including the URL of a webpage as a request mail. The repeater 100 extracts the URL in the request mail and acquires an HTML file from a web server specified by the URL. The repeater 100 generates an HTML mail including the acquired HTML file and transmits the HTML mail to the user who has requested the webpage. The client 12 displays the webpage on the basis of the HTML mail. This can prevent the client 12 from waiting for an answer from the outside. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

[0001]
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a content acquisition technology, and more particularly to a technology for acquiring content via a network.
[0002]
[Prior art]
With the development of network technology, opportunities for acquiring contents such as web pages, image data, music data, and video data via a network are increasing. When acquiring such content, a user generally uses a browser. The browser acquires a file described in a document description language such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) from a server, analyzes tags in the file, and displays a web page on a monitor. When it is instructed to display content such as an image in the HTML file, the browser obtains the content stored in the specified URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and completes the web page.
[0003]
The content of the web page is updated regularly or irregularly. For this reason, a user who is interested in a predetermined web page often accesses regularly or irregularly to check for updates. For the purpose of preventing an increase in traffic due to such access, there is a device that notifies an update of a web page using an electronic mail (Patent Document 1).
[0004]
[Patent Document 1]
JP-A-10-171700
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
Generally, in a process of acquiring content, a series of operations from requesting a content to a server from a client and acquiring the content is managed in a computer as one session. Therefore, a load is generated on the computer until the session is completed, which affects other processes that are performed on the computer. For example, when there is a lot of traffic on the network or when the response of the server is slow, the effect is over a long period. As described above, the client often waits for a response from the outside. Further, when a plurality of contents are requested at one time, a plurality of sessions are generated inside the computer, so that the influence on other processing is further increased.
[0006]
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described problems, and has as its object, at the time of content acquisition, a technique of shortening a waiting time of a client due to external circumstances, a technique of reducing a load generated on a computer due to content acquisition, It is in providing management technology for acquired content.
[0007]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
One embodiment of the present invention relates to an apparatus for relaying content. The apparatus includes means for receiving a first e-mail for requesting the provision of content, means for extracting address information specifying a storage location of the content from the first e-mail, and a location specified by the address information. And a means for transmitting a second electronic mail including the obtained content to a source of the first electronic mail. This eliminates the waiting time for content acquisition in the client. Further, since the content acquisition processing is performed outside the client, the load on the client can be reduced. “Content” is digital information such as an HTML file, text, image, audio, video, and moving image. “Address information” is, for example, a URL. The “first e-mail receiving means” and the “second e-mail transmitting means” are communication methods based on, for example, POP (Post Office Protocol), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), and the like. To receive or send the message. The “acquisition unit” acquires the content by a communication method based on, for example, HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol).
[0008]
The apparatus may further include a unit that converts a link command to another content included in the content acquired by the acquisition unit into a command for transmitting the first email. Accordingly, when the user clicks a link in the web page displayed based on the second mail, the client can automatically generate the first mail. The “link command” is link information that designates a link destination such as an “anchor tag” in HTML, and the “command for transmitting a first e-mail” transmits an e-mail such as a “mailto tag”. This is the mail transmission information for
[0009]
The apparatus may further include means for specifying a genre of the content, and means for adding information about the specified genre (hereinafter, referred to as “genre information”) to the second electronic mail. The “genre information” is information for classifying contents and types of contents and other contents. This makes it possible to manage the second electronic mail in a genre-divided state using the distribution function of the mail client.
[0010]
It is to be noted that any combination of the above-described components and any conversion of the expression of the present invention between a method, an apparatus, a system, a recording medium, a computer program, and the like are also effective as embodiments of the present invention.
[0011]
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a content relay system 10 according to the present embodiment. The first client 12a and the second client 12b (hereinafter, simply referred to as “client 12”) are computers used by users of the present system, and are connected to the local area network 14 (hereinafter, simply referred to as “LAN 14”). . The LAN 14 is connected to a wide area network 18 (hereinafter simply referred to as “WAN 18”) via a router 16.
[0012]
The client 12 has at least an e-mail client, and is capable of transmitting and receiving e-mails and displaying based on received HTML mails. The user who wants to browse the web page writes the URL of the desired web page in a predetermined area of the e-mail, for example, the subject or the body, and transmits the e-mail to the relay device 100 using the mail client. The e-mail including the URL is hereinafter referred to as “request mail”.
[0013]
The relay device 100 acquires an HTML file or content for displaying a web page from the web server 20 connected to the WAN 18 based on the URL included in the received request mail. Then, the relay device 100 generates an HTML mail including the obtained HTML file, and transmits the generated HTML mail to the transmission source address of the request mail. The mail server 22 receives the HTML mail and stores it until requested by the client 12. The user operates the client 12 to obtain HTML mail from the mail server 22. This allows the user to browse a desired web page.
[0014]
In this series of processes, since a session for acquiring a web page based on HTTP does not occur in the client 12, the load on the client 12 can be reduced. Further, even when a plurality of web pages are requested at one time, since a session for acquisition does not occur, the user can request the web pages without worrying about the load. In addition, since the acquired HTML mail can be managed by the mail client, it can be used as an information database by, for example, sorting the contents into folders according to the contents. This sorting may be performed automatically using the function of the mail client, and for that purpose, the genre information may be written in any part such as the subject part of the HTML mail.
[0015]
FIG. 2 is an internal configuration diagram of the relay device 100 of FIG. The receiving unit 102 is, for example, an SMTP server and receives a request mail from the client 12. The extraction unit 104 extracts the URL and the electronic mail address of the transmission source (hereinafter, simply referred to as “transmission source address”) from the request mail, and supplies them to the control unit 106. Although details will be described later, in the present embodiment, the extraction unit 104 also extracts genre information to be added to the HTML mail from the request mail, and supplies the genre information to the control unit 106. The control unit 106 instructs the acquisition unit 108 to acquire an HTML file or content based on the extracted URL. The control unit 106 stores the URL, the source address, the genre information, and the like in the session information storage unit 122 in association with information (hereinafter, simply referred to as “session ID”) that specifies the session for which the acquisition process is performed.
[0016]
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a data structure of the session information storage unit 122. The session ID column 150 holds a session ID. The URL column 152 holds the URL extracted from the request mail. The transmission destination address column 154 holds a transmission source address, that is, an e-mail address that is a transmission destination when the HTML mail is completed. The additional information column 156 holds genre information. For example, the session ID “3612” is a session for acquiring an HTML file from “www.xxx.com”, and an HTML mail including the acquired HTML file is transmitted to “AAA@xxx.co.jp”. Is done. “Travel” is set as the subject of the HTML mail. If the mail client has been set for distribution, the HTML mail is stored in a folder called “Travel”.
[0017]
Returning to FIG. 2, the acquisition unit 108 acquires an HTML file from the URL specified by the control unit 106, and acquires contents such as images necessary for completing a web page based on the HTML file. . The acquisition unit 108 supplies the HTML file together with the session ID to the conversion unit 112, and supplies the content other than the HTML file to the storage processing unit 110.
[0018]
The storage processing unit 110 stores the content in the content storage unit 124 and outputs a path indicating the storage location of the content to the conversion unit 112. The conversion unit 112 detects a link command to another web page such as “anchor tag” included in the HTML file supplied from the acquisition unit 108 and transmits a request mail such as “mailto tag”. To the command. At this time, the conversion unit 112 sets the electronic mail address of the relay device 100 as the destination address, and sets the URL specified by the anchor tag as the subject. Accordingly, when the user clicks the link button in the web page displayed based on the HTML mail, a screen for transmitting the request mail with the destination and the subject input in advance is displayed on the client 12. . Then, the user fills in the genre information in the body part of the request mail and transmits it. In another example, genre information may be set in advance.
[0019]
The conversion unit 112 converts the URL to the content included in the HTML file into a path in the content storage unit 124. Thus, when the mail client of the client 12 displays the web page based on the HTML mail, for example, an image in the web page can be extracted from the content storage unit 124. Since the relay device 100 is connected to the LAN 14 in FIG. 1, the relay device 100 can acquire necessary content in a shorter time than acquiring content from the web server 20 connected to the WAN 18. The conversion unit 112 outputs the HTML mail having the text of the converted HTML file to the adding unit 114 together with the session ID.
[0020]
The adding unit 114 reads the genre information associated with the session ID from the session information storage unit 122 and adds the genre information to, for example, the subject of the HTML mail. In another example, the genre information may be added to a portion other than the subject, or the genre information may be added to a position where the distribution function of the mail client can be used. The adding unit 114 supplies the HTML mail with the added genre information to the setting unit 116 together with the session ID.
[0021]
The setting unit 116 reads the destination address associated with the session ID from the session information storage unit 122, and sets the destination address of the HTML mail. The transmission unit 118 transmits the HTML mail with the destination set to the mail server 22. As a result, an HTML mail for displaying the web page specified by the user using the request mail is transmitted to the user. The providing unit 120 reads out content for forming a web page from the content storage unit 124 based on a request from the client 12 and provides the content.
[0022]
FIG. 4 is a sequence diagram of a process between the devices in the content relay system 10. The client 12 of FIG. 1 transmits a request mail to the relay device 100 of FIG. 1 (S10). The relay device 100 extracts a URL or the like from the request mail (S12), and requests the web page specified by the URL from the web server 20 in FIG. 1 (S14). Then, the web server 20 transmits an HTML file for displaying the web page to the relay device 100 (S16). Next, the relay device 100 converts the link command included in the received HTML file into a command for transmitting a request mail (S18). Next, the relay device 100 adds genre information to the HTML mail (S20) and sets a destination (S22). Then, the relay device 100 transmits the completed HTML mail to the mail server 22 of FIG. 1 (S24). The mail server 22 stores the HTML mail (S26).
[0023]
Next, the client 12 requests HTML mail from the mail server 22 based on the user's instruction (S28). This request may be made automatically at predetermined time intervals using the automatic reception function of the mail client. In response to this request, the mail server 22 sends an HTML mail to the client 12 (S30). The mail client of the client 12 analyzes the HTML included in the received HTML mail (S32), and requests the relay device 100 for contents such as images necessary for completing the web page (S34). The relay device 100 transmits the requested content to the client 12 (S36). The client 12 displays a web page including the received content on the display unit (S38).
[0024]
The present invention has been described based on the embodiments. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that the embodiments are exemplifications, and that various modifications can be made to the combination of each component and each processing process, and that such modifications are also within the scope of the present invention. .
[0025]
【The invention's effect】
ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the load which arises on a computer accompanying acquisition of content can be reduced. Also, the acquired web pages can be stored.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a content relay system according to the present embodiment.
FIG. 2 is an internal configuration diagram of the relay device of FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of a data structure of a session information storage unit in FIG. 2;
FIG. 4 is a sequence diagram of a process between devices of the content relay system of FIG. 1;
[Explanation of symbols]
10 content relay system, 100 relay device, 102 reception unit, 104 extraction unit, 106 control unit, 108 acquisition unit, 110 storage processing unit, 112 conversion unit, 114 addition unit, 116 setting unit, 118 transmission unit, 120 providing unit, 122 session information storage unit, 124 content storage unit.

Claims (3)

Means for receiving a first e-mail for requesting provision of content;
Means for extracting address information specifying a storage location of the content from the first email;
Acquiring means for acquiring the content stored at the position specified by the address information;
Means for transmitting a second e-mail including the acquired content to a source of the first e-mail;
A relay device comprising: The relay device according to claim 1, further comprising: a unit that converts a link command to another content included in the content acquired by the acquisition unit into a command for transmitting a first e-mail. . Means for specifying a genre of the content;
Means for adding information about the specified genre to the second email;
The relay device according to claim 1, further comprising:

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