Suggestions for Nettalk 6

[Wolfgang Orth]

Hello Bruce,

do you take suggestions for Nettalk 6 already? 

How about generating WSDL-files for Netallk/xFiles-SOAP-Server?

Or maybe WADL?

Or both?

thx
Wolfgang

[Bruce]

Hi Wolfgang,

suggestions are always welcome.

Not sure if it'll be in NT6, but WSDL support of some form has been on my list for a while. It's not a trivial problem, but certainly something that is achievable.

cheers
Bruce

[nevy]

OK Gentleman...please explain to the rest of us  

[Wolfgang Orth]

A SOAP-Server sends and receives messages in XML-Format.

If you run a SOAP-Server, you will know that one quite well.

But how does someone else, who does not know anything about server except its URL, write a SOAP-Client to communicate with your server?

He could ask you annoying questions, or use a WSDL-file - in case you offer one.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Web_Services_Description_Language

Well, somehow like that.....

[ccordes]

Wolfgang, WSDL! - great thought.
All I wanted was to have the Greenbar effect to be done with a class instead of being template or jscript coded.
More to that end, anywhere else that a style property is set by the template, if at all possible make it a class. - I promise to try out using IMPORTANT as necessary.

Can't wait for 6

Chris

[CyberFerret]

My suggestion for NT6 would be some sort of way that we can embed run time evaluations in XHTML snippets.

At present, we have to calculate the expression, and load it into the value or session queue, e.g.

LOC:MyString = 'John is ' & (Today() - STU:DateOfBirth)/365 & ' years old'
p_web.SetValue('MyExpression', LOC:MyString)

and then in the XHTML, do:

<!-- Net:v:MyExpression -->

to 'embed' this variable within the HTML sent to the web browser.  Wouldn't it be handy if we could do something like:

<!-- Net:x:['John is ' & (Today() - STU:DateOfBirth)/365 & ' years old'] -->

and get NetTalk to EVALUATE() then expression at run time?

[Bruce]

Good suggestion, but you can actually do this already.
Create a procedure, based on netwebsource, which generates the html you want.
Then you can "embed" this in your xhtml as
<!-- Net:functionname -->

Cheers
Bruce

[Wolfgang Orth]

Another one for the wishlist: something like .htaccess in Apache.

[Bruce]

that's a very broad topic - which part of it did you have in mind?

[Wolfgang Orth]

well, with .htaccess in Apache you can dis/allow access to certain folders to certain users.

In my case I put ZIP-files into a folder and send a link directly to someone else for downloading, not integrated into a webpage. I would like to make this entire folder password secured.

And I also would like to block complete IP-Ranges to access the server. I have no customers in China or Romania, but my server gets scanned day by day from machines over there. I feel okay since there is no PHPmyAdmin script running in my NTWS<vbg>, but I still dislike that and want to block them.

I know that I can set permissions, but that covers browses and forms only, is not covering a folder in general or even the entire webserver.

Was that somehow understandable.

Oh, and as we speak about that.... DIRECTORY

In the server-settings I can define the startpage, it is set by default to 'index.htm'. So, when I type www.myserver.com the server automatically returns www.myserver.com/index.htm.

In case I have a folder, lets say "dowloads" and this folder contains a file "index.htm", and now the user types www.myserver.com/downloads he receives an error 404. Despite the fact that an index.htm exists. The Apache returns that file automatically. If not present, it returns a 404 also.

DIRECTORY can hold several file names, the server has to check one after the other, in case he can find the first one. hmmmmmm, what?

okay - lets say the DIRECTORY has this list of names: index.htm index.html start.htm start.html.

The server looks for index.htm first. If not found, he tries the next, index.html. If not found, the next is requested: start.htm and so on. If none of the files is found, _then_ the Apache returns 404. Its for the convenience.....

[CyberFerret]

Good suggestion, but you can actually do this already.
Create a procedure, based on netwebsource, which generates the html you want.
Then you can "embed" this in your xhtml as
<!-- Net:functionname -->

Cheers
Bruce

That is fantastic Bruce!  I had completely forgotten that you could call other procedures using these tags.  Now, for my next question - can you call ROUTINEs using similar tags?

Reason being, in most of my NetWebPages, I have sections for a header, perhaps a sidebar or menu, then the content, then the footer.  In a lot of cases, the content bit requires a repeated element, such as a list of log entries from a database.  Because all the files I need are already open in the Procedure, it would be handy if I could use <!-- Net:r:MyRoutine --> and then within the code:

MyRoutine  ROUTINE
  Set(MyFile, 0)
  Loop
    Next(MyFile)
    If Error() Then Breal.
    packet = clip(packet) & '<li>' & LOG:Description & ' recorded at ' & Format(LOG:Time, @T1)
  End
  Do SendPacket

Keeps everything for that page contained within the one Procedure instead of scattering across many...??

[Bruce]

alas, no.

Cheers
Bruce

[Wolfgang Orth]

    packet = clip(packet) & '<li>' & LOG:Description & ' recorded at ' & Format(LOG:Time, @T1)

How about returning such a formatted string from the function?

[CyberFerret]

    packet = clip(packet) & '<li>' & LOG:Description & ' recorded at ' & Format(LOG:Time, @T1)

How about returning such a formatted string from the function?

Hi Wolfgang,

That wouldn't be such a problem, but then we have the additional overhead of opening the same file(s) in the other procedure to build the string.

However, my main objective is the 'wrap' the output in a loop.  In this case, there could be one, twenty, two hundred lines that I need to generate, and returned such a large block of text could be problematic, especially when you are up against maximum packet size (16K) that NT can send to the client at any one time.

Cheers,
Devan