Delphi Developers
Components for Internet Component Suite (ICS)

26th March 2019 - All the active components for ICS have now been incorporated into ICS V8.60 and later and will be installed by default with ICS, with all the sample applications.  The ICS versions of the components have new names so applications can continue using the existing version or be updated to use the newer versions.  All new development will be with the ICS versions.  

27th February 2019 - OpenSSL 1.1.1b and 1.0.2r released 

9th October 2018 - Sorry, you now need to request a free file download password to access Delphi components and OpenSSL files from this page.

There is a new ICS support forum at https://en.delphipraxis.net/forum/37-ics-internet-component-suite/ to replace the old TWSocket mailing that has stopped working. 

This page contains various components written by Magenta Systems Ltd to extend the François Piette's Internet Component Suite (ICS) version 8 from http://www.overbyte.eu/.  ICS v8 supports Delphi 7, 2006 to 2010, XE to XE8, 10 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo and 10.3 Rio.  Note that all ICS versions now include SSL free of charge.

The latest versions of ICS may be downloaded from the ICS SubVersion server using a subversion client such as TortoiseSVN.  Once your SVN client is installed, you can browse to svn://svn.overbyte.be/ics, svn://svn.magsys.co.uk/ics or http://svn.overbyte.be:8443/svn/ics or http://svn.magsys.co.uk:8443/svn/ics. The SVN login user code is ics and password is ics for read access.

Internet Component Suite (ICS) Downloads

All ICS files should normally be accessed from the ICS Download Wiki page but the important files are available here as well.

Major changes in ICS V8.60 include:

1 - Added several new components and sample applications created by Magenta Systems Ltd over the past 17 years and previously distributed and installed separately to the ICS distribution. Bundling them with ICS makes installation and updating easier, and allows existing ICS samples to make use of many the new components, such as UTF-8 file logging. All the components have new names so existing applications using the originally distributed versions will still work, but it's recommended updating existing applications for the new ICS versions. The added components include IP stream logging, SMTP Mail Queue, Time Server and Client, Whois client, blacklisting of malicious IP addresses, file logging functions, file indexing, copying and deleting, FTP indexing, multiple file uploading and downloading, HTTP page parsing and URL downloading.

2 - In THttpCli, only follow relocation for 3xx response codes, not 201 Created, but keep Location property for 201 which is often response to a POST and may be needed by the application.

3 - When starting TWSocket Connect, the IP address chosen for DNS lookup is now saved in ASCII as AddrResolvedStr which is useful in connect OK or failed events to see whether an IPV4 or IPv6 address was chosen, and which was used if DNS offered multiple IPs. AddrResolvedStr is exposed as a property in TWSocket, THttpCli, TSslHttpRest and TFFtpClient and reports in failed connection events. Other clients will be added soon.

4 - Various samples have been updated to ease testing of IPv6 and to save the diagnostic window activity to a disk log file, OverbyteIcsHttpsTst, OverbyteIcsHttpRestTst, OverbyteIcsTimeTst, OverbyteIcsX509CertsTst.

5 - Added round robin DNS lookup if DNSLookup returns multiple IP addresses, so they are used in turn after a failure when a component is called repeatedly without being freed. This is implemented in THttpCli, TSslHttpRest TFFtpClient and TIcsTimeClient. Other clients will be added soon. There is a new OnSelectDns event to override round robin lookup and make your own choice.

By default, the DNS lookup in ICS components ignores IPv6 addresses and always use the first IPv4 address offered, when there is more than one. This is usually implemented in the OnDnsLookupDone event in the application or high level component. So if that first address does not respond, the application never tries any other addresses.

This has become more of a problem when enabling applications for IPv6, by changing SocketFamily from the default sfIPv4, to sfAny, sfAnyIPv4 (prefer IPv4), sfAnyIPv6 (prefer IPV6) or sfIPv6 (only IPv6), when IPv6 addresses may also be returned as well as IPv4. Due to routing or firewall issues, IPv4 and IPv6 might not both be available and so connection will fail if that address is chosen first. Previously it was necessary to restrict SocketFamily so only the working family is attempted.

The DNS round robin implementation relies on keeping the last successful connected IP address, so it can be re-used for  subsequent connections, but looping through any alternative addresses if the last connection failed, for subsequent connection attempts. Most existing applications use the OnDnsDone event to select the connection IP address so the round robin code is added there.

Newer applications making use of TWSocket ComponentOptions wsoAsyncDnsLookup should added code in OnDNSLookupDone and update the DnsResult property which is then used by Connect.

6 - IcsHosts supports two new TSslSrvSecurity server security levels, sslSrvSecTls12Less and sslSrvSecTls13Only, the former disables TLS1.3 in ICS servers if TLSv1.3 fails (perhaps a bad client implementation) while the second only supports TLSv1.3.

7 - Up to date C++ packages are included for 10.2 Tokyo and 10.3 Rio. Information on installing ICS for C++ 2007 may be found at: https://en.delphipraxis.net/topic/844-use-ics-with-c-builder-2007/  Sorry, currently don't believe it's easy to update the ICS source code to avoid the changes needed for C++ 2007.

Detailed V8.60 Release Notes Detailed V8.58 Release Notes Detailed V8.50 Release Notes

Nightly ICS v8 for Delphi 7-2010, XE-XE8, 10 Seattle, 10,1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo, 10.3 Rio
v8 - 26 Apr 2019 (18,823,670 bytes)

OpenSSL Binaries 1.1.1 Win32
1.1.1b 32-bit - 27 Feb 2019 (1,817,764 bytes)

OpenSSL Binaries 1.1.0 Win32
1.1.0j 32-bit - 28 Nov 2018 (1,420,755 bytes)

OpenSSL Binaries 1.0.2 Win32
1.0.2r 32-bit - 27 Feb 2019 (1,785,339 bytes)

Now part of ICS V8.60 and later, as TIcsMailQueue

Magenta Systems Mail Queue Component
Version 2.5 - 26 Nov 2018 (2,414,770 bytes)

Magenta Systems Mail Queue Component has two main benefits over a simple TSslSmtpCli component: it supports extended retries over many hours or days, and supports multiple SMTP relay servers or looks-up MX servers, while alleviating the need for the application to handle retries. The component also allows HTML mail to be sent using SSL, something THtmlSmtpCli does not currently support. Mail is queued to disk, so retries will continue if the application is restarted.

TMagMailQueue is designed to prepare, queue and send email. Preparing the email is done using the ICS THtmlSmtpCli component so it may be plain text or HTML email with one or more file attachments.

Once the mail properties in QuHtmlSmtp have been specified, it is queued using the QueueMail method which saves it to an EML spool file.

The component runs a thread which checks the queue for new EML spool files, and attempts to forward them to one or more SMTP Mail Servers using TSslSmtpCli, optionally with SSL. If mail delivery succeeds, the spool file may be deleted or moved to an archive folder. If mail delivery fails, the spool file remains in the queue and further attempts are made separated by the times in minutes listed in the RetryList list. If all delivery attempts fail, the spool file may be deleted or moved to a badmail folder.

Note that some email servers support grey listing and reject the first email attempt from a new sender but allow a retry 10 or 15 minutes later, something that is very effective in blocking spam emails (since they don't usually retry).

If multiple mail servers are specified, delivery is attempted once using each server, for each retry attempt. Each mail server is specified as TMailServer and there is no limit to the total.

Each time the queue is updated or a delivery attempt made, the queue is saved to file in the control folder, so the component may be stopped and restarted with failed attempts continuing.

The EML spool files are compatible with those created by many Microsoft email applications such as CDO, and the AddtoQueue method can also be used to queue existing EML files with the queue details specified in MailQuItem.

Note, this component is intended for sending low volume email from individual Delphi applications, with more flexibility than a simple TSslSmtpCli component. For use as a heavy duty SMTP server, queue processing could be improved to avoid moving records around as much or saving them to disk as often, and mail bodies could be read as required from disk instead of being read entirely to memory first.  A mail pickup folder could be added which is scanned for new EML files.

Files and Folders Used

The TMagMailQueue component heavily uses disk files, in different sub-directories within the mail root directory specified in property MailQuDir, these are:

• control - contains MailQuItems.Ctl a single row file with the next message item number, and MailQuItems.Hdr which is a CSV file containing one row for each mail item still in the queue.
• spool - contains any queued email files, named in the format item00000001.eml with the number increasing, taken from MailQuItems.Ctl
• archive - if ArchiveSent property is true, once an email has been successfully sent it is moved into the archive directory
• badmail - if DeleteFailed property is false, once an email has exceeded all the retry attempts it is moved into the badmail directory, from where it may be manually requeued if necessary

If logging of sent email is specified, the default file name FileQuSent property is MailQuSent-yyyymmdd.log inb CSV format similar to MailQuItems.Hdr.

A demo application mailqudemo.exe illustrates simple email queuing.  The zip contains the EXE demo and required SSL files.

Release Notes

18th January 2011 - 1.0 - first public release. Not yet tested with Delphi 2009 or later.

2nd March 2011 - 1.2 - automatically create mailqueue directory in demo application, removed missing uses statement. Support queuing mail with OwnHeaders bypassing htmlmail. Log event definition changed.

11th August 2011 - 1.2 - updates subroutines for Win64 support, removed one unneeded unit from uses.

5th Oct 2011 - 1.3 - Debug logging works properly Don't retry emails that fail too large for server (error 552)

11th Sept 2012 - 1.4 - ICS V8, IPv6

23rd March 2013 - 1.5 - Added Mail Server SocketFamily and LocalAddr6 for IPv6

10th Dec 2014 - 1.6 - Better SSL handshake reporting

27th Oct 2015 - 2.0 - requires ICS V8.19 October 2015 or later.
Check and report SSL certificates using PEM file or Windows Cert Store
Allow three SMTP servers to be specified for each email in queue
Lookup DNS MX records and send to those SMTP servers
Queue keeps last response or error in queue
Mail completed log (same CSV format as queue)
Queue changed event to tell client something is happening
QueueMail method now returns item number (not boolean)
New UnQueueMail method to remove item number from queue
Demo save settings in INI file
Demo new View Mail Queue window to see what's waiting
Added SMTP Send Method, relay, specific or lookup MX mail servers
Added HELO Sending Host Name may be needed if using MX mail servers

Warning - if using MX DNS servers and multiple recipients, need to queue mail multiple times !!!! This will be fixed real soon.

7th July 2016 - 2.1 - requires ICS V8.30 July 2016 or later.
Support SSL enhancements in ICS for OpenSSL 1.1.0
Don't change SSL directory, let application control it
Use default SSL root bundle if none specified

1st December 2016 - 2.2 - requires ICS V8.39 November 2016 or later.
Better error handling.
Use OpenSSL host checking.
Fixed bug that meant failed email was not deleted from queue.
Don't queue email without recipients.
Use timer to update windows to avoid problems with mass email performance.

6th March 2017 - 2.3 - requires ICS V8.43 March 2017 or later.
Simplified SSL certificate reporting.

11 Mar 2017 - 2-4 - Added WaitSend to wait until everything sent.

22th Jun 2018 - 2.5 - requires ICS V8.55 20 June 2018 or later.
Added RetryWithoutSsl which retries an SSL failure without SSL.
Added SslCliSecurity to set client security level.
Using IcsWndControl for threaded message handling.
SendSmtpClient now created new for each attempt in case of prior faillure causing terminal corruption.
If SSL certificate verify fails, next attempt is another server.
Supports TLSv1.3 with OpenSSL 1.1.1.

26th November 2018 - 2.5 - tested with ICS 8.58
Added final OpenSSL 1.1.1a DLLs, recompiled.

Now part of ICS V8.60 and later. 

Now part of ICS V8.60 and later, as TIcsIpStrmLog

Magenta Systems IP Log Streaming Component
Version 2.8 - 14 Dec 2018 (4,156,649 bytes)

TMagIpLog is designed for IP stream logging, using TCP Client, TCP Server, UDP Client or UDP Server protocols, sending simple text lines across a network so they may be displayed or written to disk remotely. The component allows two way communication with TCP and UDP, so may also be used for simple protocols such as communication between two applications. The component supports multiple client sockets so may be used to send data to two or more different remote servers at the same time.

 For TCP and UDP clients, the component will optionally ping the remote computer first before opening an IP connection to allow faster failure retries and some confirmation that UDP may work. TCP client provides repeated connection retry attempts, including re-establishing a lost connection. UDP client will optionally keep pinging the remote during a connection to ensure it's still there. UDP server sends data to the IP address and port from which it last received data. TCP server supports multiple remote clients connecting. Received data is parsed for various line endings optionally removing control characters and triggering an event for a received line. The only other two events are optional, one for state changed when starting and stopping, the second offering progress information and errors. 

The component supports both IPv4 and IPv6, host name lookup for TCP and UDP Client, and SSL connections for TCP Client and TCP Server, including remote server certificate checking using either a local PEM bundle root file or the Windows Certificate Store.

A demo application testiplog.exe illustrates use of TMagIpLog as a TCP or UDP client or server, and both in the same program sending data locally. The same component may be used in a client or server application, to send or receive.

The Magenta Systems ComCap application may also be used to capture IP streams to files or a database.

Using TMagIpLog:

1 - Drop the component onto a form (or create it in code, see testiplog.exe).

2 - Specify LogProtocol as one of logprotUdpClient, logprotUdpServer, logprotTcpServer, logprotTcpClient.

3 - For client protocols, specify RemoteHost (name or IP address) and RemoteIpPort, CheckPing true if ping to be used, RetryAttempts to non-zero if continual retries not needed, RetryWaitSecs for delay between retries .

4 - For server protocols, LocalIpAddress is 0.0.0.0 to listen on all local addresses, LocalIpPort must be non-zero.

5 - For sending data, AddCRLF to false if line already have terminating characters, UdpNoCRLF to false if UDP should send CRLF.

6 - For receiving data, LineEndType to one of lineendCR, lineendLF, lineendCustom (set in hex in CustomLineEnd) or lineendPacket (for UDP), then MaxLineLen if a line should be returned before lineend is found, normally non-ASCII characters are removed, set StripControls to false if they should be replaced by spaces, RawData to true if CR, LF, FF and control characters should not be removed.

7 - Assign onLogRecvEvent if data is to be received, onLogChangeEvent if tracking of start and stop is needed, onLogProgEvent if progress information is needed for logging.

8 - Call StartLogging. The LogChangeEvent and LogProgEvent will trigger when LogState changes to logstateOK when data may be sent.

9 - To send a line, if function GetAnyStateOK is true, call SendLogLine. MaxSendBuffer specifies the amount of data that can be buffered otherwise SendLogLine will fail.

10 - Received data will trigger LogRecvEvent once per line.

11 - Call StopLogging to stop. Buffered data may continue to be sent after close, keep calling CheckStopped until true when it's really finished and component may be destroyed.

12 - To send an unlimited size stream, create a stream in the application with TBufferedFileStream or TFileStream, and pass it to SendStream.  LogState changes to logstateOKStream while it's being sent, then back to logstateOK as it finishes, the application should then free the stream.

13 - There is no specific handling for receiving a stream, textual data will be handled according to the normal line end properties, and can be saved to another stream in LogRecvEvent. Binary data is more problematic, set RawData to true and MaxLineLen to get a buffer load at a time, but the last buffer load will need to be extracted with GetPartialLine using a timeout, this is called automatically when the connection is closed.

14 - To send to multiple clients, set MaxSockets to the number needed, then use the function SetRemotes to specify the remote host and port for each socket number, base 0. The events all return Socnr to indicate which socket. MaxSockets also specifies how many remote clients can connect to TCP Server, but note that Socnr is dynamic and changes as remote clients come and go.

15 - To support SSL on TCP/IP client or server, drop an TSslContext component on the form, assign it to the LogSslContext property and set the ForceSsl property to true. For better performance, set LogSslSessCache to a TSslAvlSessionCache component.

16 - For SSL TCP Server, the SslContext component must have the SslCertFile and SslPrivKeyFile properties set to the file names of an SSL certificate and Private Key PEM files respectively, and SslCipherList set to sCipherMozillaSrvBack for strong but backward compatiblle cipher support. The component includes sample self signed certificate and password files iplog-cert.pem and iplog-prvkey.pem, and you can create your own with the ICS SSL sample application Pemtool, or buy commercial PEM certificates.

17 - For SSL TCP Client, the SslContext component must have the SslCAFile property set to the file name of a PEM root certification authority file containing trusted root certificates. Such a file is supplied with the component RootCaCertsBundle.pem containing various root certificates covering most major registries. SslContext SslCipherList can be left as the default to allow connection to any server. The LogSslVerMethod property can be logSslVerNone to skip certificate verification, logSslVerBundle to check using the CA bundle file or logSslVerWinStore to check using the Windows certificate store (a little slower, bur maybe more certificates). To check if certificates have been revoked set LogSslRevocation to true, beware this needs public internet access and can be very slow or fail. LogSslReportChain set to true reports certificate details checked.

Release Notes

18th August 2007 - 1.1 - using OverbyteIcsFtpSrvT instead of OverbyteIcsLibrary, UDP receive packets may be from multiple hosts, always keep IP.

5th August 2008 - 1.2 - made compatible with ICS V7 and Delphi 2009. Note only supports ANSI with Delphi 2009.

20th August 2009 - 1.3 - fixed problem with MaxSockets being reported as closed in the event when only one was open, tested with Delphi 2010.

9th August 2010 - 1.4 - removed cast warnings with Delphi 2009 and later

22nd Sept 2011 - 1.5 - added SndBufSize and RcvBufSize to increase buffer sizes and speed

11th Sept 2012 - 1.6 - better error for too many clients with server added CurSockets property for current number of server sockets

7th July 2014 - 2.0 - now only ICS 8 and later, using new ICS ping. 
Added IPv6 and SSL support, including server certificate checking.
Added host name support for UDP and TCP client with DNS lookup.
Added LogProtocols suffixed 6 for IPv6.
Cleaned up some progress messages, identify error progress events.
Removed line length limit of 1024 that was not checked.
Added send a stream of unlimited length.
Get buffered partial received line during close.
Default line end is LF instead of CR so UNIX files are processed.

13th July 2015 - 2.2 - requires ICS V8.18 June 2015 or later.
Added better SSL handshake error reporting.
Added lineendCRLF, only support FF as lineend if using CR.
Added Debug Info button for ICS info level logging.
Added SSL Server DH Params, set ECDHCurves, both for ECDH ciphers.
Note OpenSSL no longer support dhparam512, minimum is 768 bits.

23rd Oct 2015 - 2.3 - requires ICS V8.19 October 2015 or later.
Better SSL client and server certificate reporting.

8th July 2016 - 2.4 - requires ICS V8.30 July 2016 or later.
Fixed certificate reporting typo.
Removed TBufferedFileStream, not needed.
Added SrvTimeoutSecs to close idle server sessions, note needs ICS V8.30  or later to fix a SSL bug that stopped SrvTimeoutSecs working.
Added Socket property to get current socket, mainly for statistics
Report session length and data xmit/recv before closing

23rd Nov 2016 - 2.5 - requires ICS V8.39 November 2016 or later.
Added GetSendWaiting to check how many bytes of send data not yet sent.
Increased default MaxSendBuffer size to 64K.
Added property TotRecvData total data received since connection, or when method ResetRecvData was called.
Added property MaxRecvData which causes onLogRecvEvent to be called when that length has been received. May be used for fixed length binary packets or where received data contains a content length such as a HTTP response header followed by binary data.
Server takes exclusive access of addr/port.
Fixed bug with multiple clients not using correct port.
Added SSL Server Name Indication support.
Check multiple client SSL host names correctly.
Removed USE_SSL so SSL is always supported.
Removed TX509Ex now using TX509Base.
Using OpenSSL certificate verification host checking.
Server now supports LogSslReportChain to report server certificates, checks expired and reports chain.

7th March 2017 - 2.6 - requires ICS V8.43 March 2017 or later.
set IcsLogger for context so it logs more stuff.
Simplified reporting SSL certs in client handshake.
Improved validation of server certificates.
Use threaded DNS lookup.

22nd June 2018 - 2.7 - requires ICS V8.55 20 June 2018 or later.
Support TLSv1.3, no real changes.
Don't start SSL handshake twice.
Cleaned up SSL error handling.
Added SslCliSecurity to set client security.

14th December 2018 - 2.8 - tested with ICS 8.58
Added final OpenSSL 1.1.1a DLLs, recompiled.
Removed madexcept.

Pending major changes to use IcsHosts in 3.0.

Now part of ICS V8.60 and later.  Uses IcsHosts.

Now part of ICS V8.60 and later, as TIcsWhoisCli with a new sample application

Whois Component and Demo
Version 1.0 - 2 Nov 2005 (254,079 bytes)

A Whois component and demonstration application.  Whois is a protocol to interpret a remote server for information about a domain name or an IP address, and return textual information about 'owner' of the name or address.  The demo application interprets the result and will perform a secondary query to another Whois server if necessary.

Now part of ICS V8.60, as TIcsTimeClient and TIcsTimeServer with a new sample application

SNTP Time Server and Client Components
Version 1.0 - 9 Mar 2006 (11,405 bytes)

TTimeServ is an updated version of Nathan Anderson's time server component adding SNTP support.  TWSTimeClient is an updated version of Chris Barber's time client component adding SNTP support and functions to change the PC UTC time.  SNTP provides time correction with fractional seconds, unlike the earlier Time protocol that is round seconds only.

Magenta Systems Ltd, 9 Vincent Road, Croydon CR0 6ED, United Kingdom
Phone 020 8656 3636, International Phone +44 20 8656 3636
https://www.magsys.co.uk/
Copyright © 2019 Magenta Systems Ltd, England. All Rights Reserved.