Work with binary files in VBSscript - read and write local and remote files

Basics

     VBScript and JScript/JavaScript do not have native functions/commands to read and write files, because these languages were designed as "safe" client-side programming languages. Denied access to file system is it's primary feature.
     Server-side ASP code and applications has another work requirements, file system access (read/write files) is at first of them. The only way to work with files is to use built-in or external ActiveX or COM object.
     Microsoft solved this problem using FileSystemObject - but the object cannot read/write binary files (There is some work-around to use it to store binary files also - see code bellow - but you can only read text files with this object).
     Many people work on this simple task in C++, VBA, Delphi and other languages to create object, which let's you read binary data. One of this great objects is our ByteArray class (member of ScriptUtilities library), which let's you read and write binary files, work with binary data using blocks, convert it to/from Unicode string using more than 100 code pages, convert to hex string, etc.

      Please see pure-asp file upload with progress bar if you want to upload and save files from client-side.
      This article shows several ways to work with binary files on local and remote computers (with http/ftp) using free objects from Microsoft.

1. ADODB.Stream object

ADODB.Stream is a first object you can use to read/write text and binary files. The object is included in ADO 2.5 and later.

a) SaveBinaryData

Function SaveBinaryData(FileName, ByteArray)
  Const adTypeBinary = 1
  Const adSaveCreateOverWrite = 2
  
  'Create Stream object
  Dim BinaryStream
  Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
  
  'Specify stream type - we want To save binary data.
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary
  
  'Open the stream And write binary data To the object
  BinaryStream.Open
  BinaryStream.Write ByteArray
  
  'Save binary data To disk
  BinaryStream.SaveToFile FileName, adSaveCreateOverWrite
End Function

b) SaveTextData

ADODB.Stream let's you also save text data and let's you specify charset (codepage) for text-to-binary data conversion (against of Scripting.TextStream object).

Function SaveTextData(FileName, Text, CharSet)
  Const adTypeText = 2
  Const adSaveCreateOverWrite = 2
  
  'Create Stream object
  Dim BinaryStream
  Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
  
  'Specify stream type - we want To save text/string data.
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeText
  
  'Specify charset For the source text (unicode) data.
  If Len(CharSet) > 0 Then
    BinaryStream.CharSet = CharSet
  End If
  
  'Open the stream And write binary data To the object
  BinaryStream.Open
  BinaryStream.WriteText Text
  
  'Save binary data To disk
  BinaryStream.SaveToFile FileName, adSaveCreateOverWrite
End Function

c) ReadBinaryFile

Function ReadBinaryFile(FileName)
  Const adTypeBinary = 1
  
  'Create Stream object
  Dim BinaryStream
  Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
  
  'Specify stream type - we want To get binary data.
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary
  
  'Open the stream
  BinaryStream.Open
  
  'Load the file data from disk To stream object
  BinaryStream.LoadFromFile FileName
  
  'Open the stream And get binary data from the object
  ReadBinaryFile = BinaryStream.Read
End Function

d) ReadTextFile

Function ReadTextFile(FileName, CharSet)
  Const adTypeText = 2
  
  'Create Stream object
  Dim BinaryStream
  Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
  
  'Specify stream type - we want To get binary data.
  BinaryStream.Type = adTypeText
  
  'Specify charset For the source text (unicode) data.
  If Len(CharSet) > 0 Then
    BinaryStream.CharSet = CharSet
  End If
  
  'Open the stream
  BinaryStream.Open
  
  'Load the file data from disk To stream object
  BinaryStream.LoadFromFile FileName
  
  'Open the stream And get binary data from the object
  ReadTextFile = BinaryStream.ReadText
End Function

2. Scripting.FileSystemObject object

You can also use TextStream object from Scripting library to store binary data. This function may be useable on servers without ADO installed. This function uses BinaryToString from Convert a binary data (BinaryRead) to a string by VBS article.

a) SaveBinaryDataTextStream

Function SaveBinaryDataTextStream(FileName, ByteArray)
  'Create FileSystemObject object
  Dim FS: Set FS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  
  'Create text stream object
  Dim TextStream
  Set TextStream = FS.CreateTextFile(FileName)
  
  'Convert binary data To text And write them To the file
  TextStream.Write BinaryToString(ByteArray)
End Function

3. WinHttpRequest (XMLHTTP, ServerXMLHTTP) and remote files.

     Microsoft created several objects, which let's you read remote binary and text files. First of them was Microsoft.XMLHTTP - the object is using WinINET API, so there is no good idea to use it on server-side ASP script. Thanks to WinINET API, XMLHTTP has a great functionality - it supports any URL - http, https, ftp and gopher. The URL looks like protocol://usename:password@server/folder/file?parameters.

     Other MS HTTP objects are using new WinHTTP interface. There are three object you can use:
MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP
WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5
WinHttp.WinHttpRequest
    ServerXMLHTTP and WinHttpRequest objects has a lot of properties and methods, which let's you specify proxy, additional request headers and so on.
    You can download latest versions of WinHttp objects from msdn site, they are also included in some windows service packs and new windows versions.
    See also post binary data to URL from WSH/ASP/VBA/VBS.

a) BinaryGetURL

Function BinaryGetURL(URL)
  'Create an Http object, use any of the four objects
  Dim Http
'  Set Http = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
'  Set Http = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
  Set Http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")
'  Set Http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest")
  
  'Send request To URL
  Http.Open "GET", URL, False
  Http.Send
  'Get response data As a string
  BinaryGetURL = Http.ResponseBody
End Function

You can use ResponseText property to get the document data as a string (or BinaryToString VBS function).

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