Andrew,
Something trivial I was thinking of was the test functions on the tester page. Something non-trivial I was thinking of would be like the calculator (for a GUI) or sending something programmatically as a series of instructions to carry out. Now that I think of it, maybe one trivial, and one or two non-trivial examples (GUI and program) would be good. But the key would be to capture ALL HTTP session data (headers, GET/POST, cookies), and show the SODA envelope in an indented (4 space) format for illustration purposes. Maybe even with web access log files too, so someone can see the entire session, from client and server perspectives, from API perspective as well. When debugging, that's what it comes down to understanding, and it would have been easier if it was documented. And I know I'll probably forget in a few months or a year unless I leave some notes behind. ;-) What do you think?
Leif
It's certainly the case that when things go wrong, you end up looking at the low level XML in the requests (i.e. SODA).
Capturing the HTTP session data for some trivial examples is an interesting idea,
but it will be verbose. The requests/responses will differ depending upon whether
the IOElement is set up to use GET or POST and whether it makes synchrounous or
asyncrounous requests.
The GET requests look quite ugly. This is part of a GET request to the Calculator service to perform "3 + 8":
GET /dynapi/examples/dynapi.util.ioelement-soda-calc-js.asp?IORequestID=io9871945172862595&IOElementID=DynObject10&IOMethod=get&IOResponse=text/html&IOEnvelope=%3Cenvelope%3E%3Csid%3E740EE-30786407-BB56-065891136%3C/sid%3E%3Cmethod%3Eadd%3C/method%3E%3Cbody%3E%3Csoda%3E%3Ca0%3E%3Cs1%3E8%3C/s1%3E%3Cr0/%3E%3Cs1%3E3%3C/s1%3E%3C/a0%3E%3C/soda%3E%3C/body%3E%3C/envelope%3E
Messy, huh? It becomes easier once the request is broken down to:
GET /dynapi/examples/dynapi.util.ioelement-soda-calc-js.asp
IORequestID=io9871945172862595
IOElementID=DynObject10
IOMethod=get
IOResponse=text/html
IOEnvelope=<envelope><sid>740EE-30786407-BB56-065891136</sid><method>add</method><body><soda><a0><s1>8</s1><r0/><s1>3</s1></a0></soda></body></envelope>
And when the IOEnvelope is extracted, we get a recognizable SODA request: <envelope> <sid>740EE-30786407-BB56-065891136</sid> <method>add</method> <body> <soda> <a0> <s1>8</s1> <r0/> <s1>3</s1> </a0> </soda> </body> </envelope>
I think it will make our lives much easier if concentrate on documenting the SODA XML. The cookies and stuff have never seemed of any great importance to me - but maybe that's because I use Tomcat which just handles all the session management for me.
I'll have bit of a play with this stuff this evening and see what I come up with.
Andrew.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Gillett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 11:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Dynapi-Dev] PHP SODA - it connects!
Hi Leif,under
I'd be willing to help out with documenting the SODA RPC protocol. I've also followed the difficult path of reverse-engineering the jscript ASP code to get the Java servlet going. If I could contribute to, or review, any documentation about SODA then it will help me to better understand any deficiencies in my java code.
regards, Andrew
Leif W wrote:
I've put the most recent PHP SODA stuff into CVS, if you want to look.
Right now, it only connects using the tester page. The main / modified
files are the following four, and only been tested on the newer PHP4
conversation,Apache2.
dynapi3x/examples/ioelmsrv.php dynapi3x/examples/ioelmsrv.soda.php dynapi3x/examples/dynapi.util.ioelement-soda-tester.html dynapi3x/examples/dynapi.util.ioelement-soda-tester.php
Just an idea for the docs or example page, something I'd like to do is
elaborate upon what SODA is and does by dissecting an entire
confusing,when a user clicks something non-trivial. I found all this very
thisbut have a good grasp of it now. I think I could better convey some of
complexity for an API user rather than let it sit hidden in the code for only the API hackers one by one.
Leif
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 12:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Dynapi-Dev] PHP SODA - it connects!
Hi Leif,
Thanks for posting to the list. I'm well out of touch with dynapi at the moment but look forward to seeing soda php/perl versions so I can test with Apache.
Kevin.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Leif W" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Dynapi-Dev] PHP SODA - it connects!
Had a malformed envelope creation.-- clipped.
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