I am building a web application, not hosted by the client but on the cloud somewhere, probably azure. It will need the ability to access some local devices such as a receipt printer or cash draw from where they run it. Via a browser this is obviously not possible.
I was thinking of creating a service that they can install locally on their PC that listens to a web service and when it gets a message can perform the tasks such as opening the cash draw.
Is this how people have done similar things in the past? Are there other methods? What technologies do you recommend as I plan on the local service being able to be run on either PC or Mac with minimum fuss. I was considering either Flex or Mono (the app was written in ASP.NET), any other suggestions?
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I am looking to build a webapp for stock management, since it does not need to be hosted on the internet( only admin and sellers can access it ), with it's database on the local computer, I need to find a way for making it easier for the sellers to use the webapp without running a server and all that stuff since they are not tech-savvy
A server is not mainly a computer on the internet or cloud. You can use a local computer as a server. This tutorial is a great way to gather all of the Django application's parts into a single docker-compose file. You can run this docker-compose on any computer, and every computer inside your local network would have access to it (obviously, you should put the computer running the docker-compose in your local network first). Make sure the server's firewall (The computer running the docker-compose) allows traffic on the application's port.
Background: I've got an C++/Qt-based application that communicates with servers on the user's LAN. It uses non-blocking TCP and UDP sockets, and the networking is implemented via calls to the BSD sockets API (i.e. socket()/send()/recv()/select()/etc). It all works well.
The other day, just for fun, I decided to recompile the application using emscripten, so that it could run as a WebAssembly app inside a web browser.
This worked surprisingly well -- within an hour or two, I had my app up and running inside Google Chrome. However, the app's usefulness in this configuration is severely limited by the fact that it isn't able to connect to any servers -- presumably this is because it is running in a restricted/sandboxed environment.
If I wanted to pursue this line of development beyond the clever-hack-demo stage and try to make it useful, I would need to find a way for my program to discover and connect to servers on the user's LAN.
My question is: is that functionality at all possible for a Emscripten/WebAssembly-based app to perform? If so, what steps would I need to take? (i.e. would it require upgrading the LAN's servers to handle WebSocket-based connections? Would it require adding some sort of proxy server to run on the web server that the web page was served from? Is UDP even a thing in a web-app context? Are there other hoops that would also have to be jumped through?)
My question is, is there a good way to push an integer value to a running windows service without restarting it and without writing to disk or having it poll some database?
Here's my scenario and a few thoughts:
I need to pass data to a windows service in real time I DO NOT want there to be a delay. All I need to give it is in integer and it can do the rest. My predecessor had it set up to poll a database every 10 min but that is no longer an option. I need the response time to be less than a second. I suppose technically I could just reduce the poll time to 0.5 sec but I'm thinking that would be bad for the database server. I know you can pass data to a windows service when it starts but restarting this service isn't an option because of what it's doing.
I would love to use a web service and just call a web method to pass in the data but the tasks require elevated (admin) permissions and almost everything involves file system access so my understanding is that a web service isn't really the best option either.
I've thought of using a hybrid scenario where I run a web service and a windows service on the same machine but then I still have the problem of how to pass the integer from the web service to the windows service... I could technically use a file system watcher but I really don't want to create a file just to pass an integer. I thought maybe I could use localDb and have the web service just write the value there and have the windows service poll localDb every 0.5 sec, But I'm not sure how much that polling would affect overall performance of other things. I really want a way to push data to the windows service rather than having the service poll somewhere else.
The project I work on has a front-end UI that communicates with a Windows Service running on the same system. In the past, I used the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), but found this to be heavy-weight for what I really needed. I am now using a TCP socket over the localhost address (127.0.0.1) to exchange data between the UI and the service.
Based on your description, the web service approach seems heavy-weight, kinda like the WCF approach we used to use. And, as you've noted, it has permissions issues. A simple application that pushes the integer to your service over a socket would be straightforward in my mind.
If WCF is of interest, here's a couple links that might help:
Creating a user interface for monitoring and interacting with a running windows service
GUI and windows service communication
Some background
I'm working on a project that involves a standalone LAN network with number of linux PC's and 1 central windows PC. I need to write web services (right now I got some examples work with jersey in java) for both the linux PC's and the central window PC. I'm wishing to publish an API Gateway in the central PC, which will need to know the addresses and ports of the other PC's so he can address their REST services.
The question at hand
My question can be seperated into 2 parts:
1) How will I make service discovery work? The option I know about from my research till now is:
Using etcd. Seems easy and simple, but I don't see the benefit of it over managing a database in the API Gateway and publishing on it routes for registering and deregistering services.
2) How will the other linux PC's services will know the address of the central windows PC? I read many articles about the service discovery pattern, and failed to find a single one that address the part about how exactly the services know the address of the service registery. Lets assume that the address is fixed in the LAN and doesn't change while my system should be working, but I don't know it when deploying (My clients need to deploy it in several different LANs where the address of central station can be different, and I can't trust them to define it in a config before deploying)
Thanks a lot in advance for any assistance :)
I don't have the reputation to answer but I am interested in this question for similar reasons.
You might find this question and answer useful on programmers stackexchange which talks about a broadcast approach.
I'm researching etcd and Netflix eureka and trying to understanding if this could be applied on the local LAN.
I have a web site that exposes a web service to all my desktop clients.
Randomly, these clients will invoke the web service which in turn will add a message jpeg in byte array format to the MSMQ.
I have a service application that reads from this queue and performs an enhancement on this jpeg and saves it to the hard drive.
The number of clients uploading at anyone time is unpredictable.
I choose this method because I do not want to put any strain on IIS. The enhancements my service application performs is not much 'erg' but it exists nevertheless.
However, after realizing that my service application had stopped for sometime and required restarting I noticed the RAM leap up to clear the backlog. Whilst I have corrected this and the service is now coded to restart automatically on fail I surmised that a backlog could exists at busy times which again give a higher RAM usage.
Now, should I accept to do the processing all within my web service and then save to the hard drive or am I correct in using a MSMQ?
I am using C# and asp.net