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is it possible for a time stamp included as text on a web page to be altered during network transport of the data

But no. My boss uses a laptop. He connects it to our wired internal network and he gets "1/5/17". He clears all caches and connects it to our wireless internal network and he gets "1/11/17". He clears again and connects simultaneously to our wired and wireless internal networks and he gets "1/8/17". He clears again and connects from his home network and he gets "1/17/17". He does it all again in a variety of orders with multiple different browsers and gets the same weird results in each of the above scenarios for each connection method.

Malcolm wrote:Those timestamps are always expressed as simple HTML text? Do you have access to the mechanism which injects the HTML? If so, what is it?

updateNextSteps: function()
  {
    // make an AJAX call to get the next steps text and update the page with the results
    EvidenceSetDwrFacade.getNextSteps( this.evidenceSetId, function( response )
      {
        if ( response )
        {
          $( 'nextStepsContent' ).innerHTML = response;
        }
      }.bindAsEventListener( this ) );
  },

TPRJones wrote:Nah, it's calling to the vendor's server and I don't have that sort of access I'm afraid.

TheCatt wrote:

TPRJones wrote:Nah, it's calling to the vendor's server and I don't have that sort of access I'm afraid.

fiddler to attach to the process?

TPRJones wrote:

Malcolm wrote:Those timestamps are always expressed as simple HTML text? Do you have access to the mechanism which injects the HTML? If so, what is it?

Okay, having dug into the the backside of this piece of crap, it's mostly written in Javascript. Yay.

It looks like the text for the time stamp is being displayed as simple text. I've isolated the code that pulla and update this information, and it looks like it just uses an ajax call to get content and then display the text. Or can an ajax call include injecting more code that I can't see in which might be some code that runs that may try to create the timestamp on the fly and fail for some reason?

Code: Select all

updateNextSteps: function()
  {
    // make an AJAX call to get the next steps text and update the page with the results
    EvidenceSetDwrFacade.getNextSteps( this.evidenceSetId, function( response )
      {
        if ( response )
        {
          $( 'nextStepsContent' ).innerHTML = response;
        }
      }.bindAsEventListener( this ) );
  },

If it's plain text or served up by the server itself it should be the same everywhere, unless the server is providing different information. But if that ajax call can pull in more code then maybe that's where it's hiding from me.

But don't bother yourselves more on this. It's too much of a mess with not enough information. And it's probably either a caching thing or something weird they are doing on their end.

TPRJones wrote:Alright, using the Chrome console I can see the Ajax call. "response" goes from a null value to a line of text including the date and time built right in, pulled in right from the server. So unless the Ajax calls could fall afoul of some caching that doesn't appear to be affecting the rest of the page, then their servers are giving us weird results directly.

Thanks! I've never known about those debug tools in the browser. Sure would have made my recent foray into coding Java a bit easier.

TPRJones wrote:Oh, sorry, Javascript. It's all javascript everywhere these days, it seems.