ICS Components Help File
Last Updated: 03/11/2003

The Internet Component Suite (ICS) is a collection of Internet / intranet components created by François Piette. It is distributed as freeware with full source code for all Delphi and CBuilder versions.

At the heart of ICS are TWSocket and TWSocketServer components. They encapsulates the winsock API, offering support for TCP, UDP, and ICMP protocol. Included in the suite is a series of higher level components, encapsulating various common Internet protocols, such as POP3, SMTP, FTP, HTTP, SOCKS and others. All of these components either use TWSocket or are derived from it.

Some of the components have a synchronous version (like TSyncPop3Cli), while others have synchronous methods added. However, the use of either of these is deprecated. It is strongly encouraged to use the asynchronous version (like TPop3Cli) or the asynchronous methods instead (see individual help.)

Asynchronous means that a component is non blocking; a method call will return immediately while the component will do the request in the background. When the request is done, an event will fire indicating it.

This means that the application can do other tasks without blocking and without the need for waiting loops or threads. However, multithreading may be needed if your application involves lengthy processing and/or blocking. In this case it might be necessary to isolate either the lengthy code or the component in its own thread. For further details, please consult the TWSocket help. The components included in ICS are:

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Below are the full descriptions for all the components:

TFtpClient: TFtpClient is a FTP client (RFC 959 implementation) based on TWSocket.
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TMimeDecode: TMimeDecode take a file or a stream as input and produce several event when the message is parsed. each event can be used to display or to save to a file the message parts.

TMimeDecode decodes encoded parts using 'base64' and 'quoted-printable' methods. For those parts, the OnPartLine event will gives DECODED data. Other methods are passed not decoded. You can use the property ContentTransferEncoding to know which encoding method is used and add your own decoding mechanism.
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TPing: TPing uses the ICMP protocol to "ping" a remote host.
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TPop3Cli: TPop3Cli class implements the POP3 protocol (RFC-1225, RFC-1939) used to retrieve mail form a mail server.

This component, combined with the TSmtpCli component form the basis of an e-mail client.
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TSmtpCli: TSmtpCli class implements the SMTP protocol (RFC-821) used to send e-mail.

This component, combined with the TPop3Cli component form the basis of an e-mail client.
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TSyncPop3Cli: TPopSync3Cli class adds synchronous functions to the TPop3Cli class, which implements the POP3 protocol (RFC-1225, RFC-1939) used to retrieve mail form a mail server.
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TSyncSmtpCli: TSyncSmtpCli class adds synchronous functions to the TSmtpCli class, which implements the SMTP protocol (RFC-821) used to send e-mail.
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TWSocket: The base component of ICS. All other components use it. It can be used for own based protocols other than the one provided with ICS. It ecaptulates TCP and UDP and can be used als a client or a server. SOCKS support and Multicast is also provided.
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TWSocketServer: TWSocketServer is derived from TWSocket which has many properties and methods. Not all are used by the server, only the necessary ones are listed here.
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The ICS FAQ is created and maintained by the ICS VIP Documentation Effort Group.
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