[ANN] This Week in LiveCode 259

[Richard Gaskin]

Andre Garzia wrote:

 > Devising your own binary file transfer protocol based purely on TCP
 > sockets is a very tedious and error prone process that will get you
 > no advantages unless you really have some special need that is not
 > solved by any of the solutions that already exists.
 >
 > The easiest way to work around not being able to use FTP and friends,
 > is with a simple HTTP server and a CGI on the server machine that has
 > logic for receiving file uploads, then you simply use either libURL or
 > TSNet to send the files.


When SuperCard introduced socket programming to the Mac xTalk world with 
its companion Marionette add-on, being young folk we got all excited 
about crafting custom protocols for every little thing we needed.

It was a good learning experience, and I came to appreciate the vast 
range of styles in writing clients for NNTP, Gnutella, and FTP, in 
addition to the random protocols I came up with on my own.

But the biggest lesson I learned is not to write custom protocols. :) 
It's a lot of work to get them working well, and far more work to make 
them secure and robust.

These days I rarely think about protocols at all, at least in 
customer-facing code. I've adopted using HTTP as the default solution 
for everything, unless I have a specific reason not to use it.

Most of what we need from a server is to submit a request and get a 
reply, and occasionally have some metadata along for the ride.  HTTP 
does that well, with very slim header requirements that are also vastly 
extensible, so metadata is as simple or rich as you need in the moment. 
  There's more documentation and tooling for HTTP than any other 
protocol, so it's easy to learn to use it well, and if another 
programming joins the team they can work with your code effortlessly.

Defaulting to HTTP for customer-facing systems simplifies a lot of 
decision-making, and since most of the rest of the world makes the same 
choice at least we're in good company. :)

-- 
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems