I have existing chat server code written in C/C++ that communicates over TCP/IP with client installed GUI. I'd like to also allow "web" access to this functionality, where users can simply go to my website, have it display a nice basic HTML5 driven GUI, and have them interact with my chat server code and other users.
So: backend written in C, frontend HTML5 website that updates to clients immediately via Ajax Push. Is there some kind of C library I can use to achieve this? I would also accept a solution using technology that isn't Ajax Push as long as it functions how I describe. Note that I want to extend to be more data/traffic than simple chat, so I want this as close to realtime as possible.
I understand that APE (server) allows you to do stuff like this, but you have to write your backend in javascript? Is there a way to easily 'glue' it to a C/C++ server via pipes or something?
I'm working in Linux..
I may have misunderstood your question, but this sounds like what you're looking for: http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt
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Is it possible to communicate from a web browser(Loaded an HTM page from server) to an application running in the same server using AJAX. Need to send the request from browser using a button click and update the page with responses received from one another application running in the same server machine?
I am using HTML pages to create website and not using any PHP or ASP like server side scripting. In server machine data are manipulated using a C++ application.
I think you can use any sort of Javascript functions to do that. But you might need to use jQuery or similar frameworks to make your live easier. You might need to search for "Comet Programming" to know exactly how to do 2-way communication between client and server
Updated:
Well, this kind of stuff requires you to read a lot (if you have not already known). Basically, what you need is a server that can do long-polling (or eventsource, websockets). There are many open-source ones that might help you to get started. I can list a several good ones here. There are a lot more
http://www.ape-project.org/
http://cometd.org/
http://socket.io/
http://code.google.com/p/erlycomet/
http://faye.jcoglan.com/
So after you have the comet server up and running you will need to setup the client side (probably Javascript). For those listed projects, most of them come with the client side code to interact with the server (Except for erlycomet). Therefore, you can just use the examples provided and run a quick prototype. If you want to use your raspberry pi, you can use nodejs which provide a lot of ease for dealing with real-time communication (socket.io, faye). And lately, http://www.meteor.com/
I would think of the problem this way: you want to provide a web front end to an existing c++ application. To achieve this you need to think about how your web server communicates with your c++ application. Communication between the browser and web server can be thought of as a separate problem - as you say AJAX calls can be used, or maybe have a look at websockets.
Once you have your request in the web server you need to communicate it to the C++ application (and/or visa versa). This can be done a number of ways, e.g. sockets or RPC. I found this question here which has some good advice.
I am pretty new to web programming.I am developing a HTML5 based user interface which is supposed to use a middle ware written in C/C++.How can I do this?
I do not want to use any browser specific feature/library to communicate with the middle ware. Can we do the same at the server side and then send back the information to the browser? If so how can I achieve this communication with the middle ware at the server side?
Thanks in advance for the reply.
Note : I am planning to use Tomcat as the server in loop back.
As suggested above, you could use CGI (e.g., perl scripts) as a middle-man between the Tomcat server and your C++ middleware. What I also think might work well, and am planning on using myself in the near future, is to use boost::asio, and take the example HTTP server and modify it to use your middleware. You could then communicate between the Tomcat server and the C++ server using AJAX with JSON.
There is also something called pion server http://www.pion.org/projects/pion-network-library
It allows you to write the entire server in your own C++, with most of the common tasks abstracted away.
The Wt "web toolkit" library (pronounced "witty") may be of interest. Essentially all web-aspects are taken care of this, so absolutely no middleware. Here is an intro, quoting from the website:
The API is widget-centric and uses well-tested patterns of desktop GUI
development tailored to the web. To the developer, it offers
abstraction of web-specific implementation details, including
client-server protocols, event handling, graphics support, graceful
degradation (or progressive enhancement), and URL handling.
Unlike many page-based frameworks, Wt was designed for creating
stateful applications that are at the same time highly interactive
(leveraging techinques such as WebSockets and Ajax to their fullest)
and accessible (supporting plain HTML browsers), using automatic
graceful degradation or progressive enhancement. Things that are
natural and simple with Wt would require an impractical amount of
effort otherwise: switching widgets using animations, while being
perfectly indexed by search robots with clean URLs, or having a
persistent chat widget open throughout, that even works in legacy
browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
It can run with its own web server (based on a Boost component) or be linked against standard web server libraries.
I wrote a short blog post about how to integrate it with another C++ component I wrote (RInside, which permits to embed R inside C++ apps) and by joining the two, I had a simple 'webapp' exporting R functionality to the web.
You can further enhance it via Javascript but that is something I have not looked into in any detail.
I am looking on advice on how best to approach a new project I need to develop. From the outset I must add, I have 0 experience with Web development on any level.
What I need to do is provide a web interface through the browser which will communicate with a server back end. The data retrieved will be sourced from either a DB or from another source - external device which the server itself will communicate with via IP. The data retrieved from the external device will always be a string format of n length (non unicode) and the DB data will mostly be strings and numbers with the odd blob thrown in (storing a picture). The communication will always go from the Client (web browser) to the Server. I don't believe that the server would need to instigate the comms.
I have Delphi XE, so started looking at using a REST server for communication and I think that seems to be OK. However, from what I can see, I need to create HTML web pages to "render" the data on the web browser. Is that true? Can I use the IW components with a REST server? If so, I'm not sure how to get the data to/from the browser UI. Am I better of investigating Ruby on Rails perhaps? From what I read on a different thread in here, it's based on MVC and some other areas which I feel, design wise, would fit how I would create the application (I was planning on creating the app based on the MVP or similar design pattern).
I think REST makes the most sense, so if the IW components can't be used, are there any 3rd party products I can use which would let me design "pretty" UI html. Given I don't know java script, would that be a stumbling block with REST too.
Thanks and hopefully I have provided enough information.
Thanks
Jason
Will a human being be responsible for typing the data retrieved from your external device into a web page?
If so, and you have no web development experience, Intraweb is definitely the way to go for Delphi programmers wanting to build a web application without learning new skills. For additional components to create a prettier UI I suggest using TMS Software's Intraweb Component Pack Pro.
If you don't need a human being to manually type in this data then you don't need Intraweb at all. Instead you would write a client application which presumably interrogated your external device for the data and then transmitted it to the REST server. Look at the documentation you've used to build your REST server and it should have a section on how to build a REST client.
You can build an ISAPI module with delphi that does the job, or include a HTTP server right into you executable with Indy, ICS or Synapse.
ISAPI will give you the freedom to choose Apache or IIS and give you all their power this way. Embeded HTTP server will give you a nice small application in which you control all ascpects of how it works.
Yes go with REST as it is simple and clean. All you need is to think and design the API (functions that your server will support). You can bind the APIs to the URL schema thus using the REST principle. I would do it simply like this.
A client makes a request. You show some form of GUI (load or render a HTML page with possible javascript)
User makes an action, you call appropriate API (or the user does it directly).
Show the user some result
Just guide the user process through a series of API calls until the result is made
You can use plain HTML and then add javascript if needed (jquery) or you can use ExtJS from Sencha which makes building a nice GUI a lot easier and is very well structured.
I would not use any "WYSIWYG" web tools. Plain old HTML written by your favorite editor is still the king in my opinion.
Do you think it would be possible to embed a HTTP server inside a Google Chrome extension?
I've seen other Google Chrome extensions execute native code and apparrently they do it by using NPAPI, but I have no idea what that is. And it's really freaking me out, as I'm no C++ expert or anything like that. So I feel a little stuck now and that's why I'm asking for help.
Specifically, I want to create an extension for Chrome with features similar to Opera Unite. For those who don't know what I'm talking about: Opera Unite is basically a zero-conf web server bundled with the browser. I don't want to use it for the same things Opera does, but I like the concept.
I was thinking about using something like node.js inside the browser to create a simple web interface to control some stuff in the browser. Think of it as a remote control for the browser. If node.js isn't possible I'd like to use lighthttpd or something similar. The technology really doesn't matter as long as it allows me to receive commands over HTTP.
But how do I take an existing web server and make a NPAPI plugin out of it?
Clarification: I'd like any browser to be able to communicate with my extension. Especially I want mobile devices like Android or the iPhone to be able to remote control the browser. Is there any other way to accomplish that except with a HTTP server?
Another update: I think the easiest way to do this would be to use a relay server on the web like Pusher or some self-created service. But I don't like this approach because it requires constant internet access and because it's a paid service.
Thank you all!
If you want to do a remote control for the browser, would something like HTML5 WebSockets work for you?
http://www.html5rocks.com/tutorials/websockets/basics/
You can have an external "remote" server that your extension listens to via WebSockets. If you want to host a webserver via extensions. You would need to use NPAPI, there are many C++ libraries out there (Google search) that can do a simple webserver. But I would rather use WebSockets communicate to an external server which will provide you anything you want.
But if you insist, you would need to learn C++, NPAPI, there are many examples online regarding NPAPI.
Here is another web server implemented with chrome.socket: https://github.com/kzahel/web-server-chrome. The server example linked to in chrome-app-samples is actually really buggy and will lock up if you e.g. hold down Ctrl-R on a page served by it.
Here is info on making a web-server in a Chrome app:
https://developers.google.com/live/shows/7320022-5001
I want to integrate the RESTful-API in my Qt-Project.
I already read the example on this page, but this is only for receiving data from a RESTful-interface, not for sending new data to the server. In Java, I can use RESTlet for example, is there any possibility to use something like that for Qt, too?
Or is there even a simple way to send data from Qt to RESTful, for example when I create a XML before?
Since REST is just normal URL access, there's no reason you can't use the Qt HttpClient interfaces to talk to you backend Java REST interface. You just have to make a determination to use XML or JSON - both have very capable libraries available, and both are just text interfaces.
Odd you ask, I'm in the middle of doing this very thing myself today - I'm implementing a JSON based REST interface in Java, and I'll wire up the plumbing to my Qt app shortly.
I'll make an effort to update this answer as I progress.