Newbie Question: I want to open a socket on another server

Rails
1

Help!
I need someone to get me in the right ballpark. I’ve been going around
in circles for the last 24 hours.

I want to open a TCPsocket on another server and eventually send and
receive XML which is what the other servers speaks.

I have both “Agile Web…with Ruby” and “Programming Ruby” but can find
no examples. I’ve poured over the forum list, too.

I’ve played with examples such as:

    <label for="search">Search term:</label>
    <%= text_field_tag :search %>
    <%= observe_field(  :search,
                        :frequency  => 0.5,
                        :update     => :results,
                        :url        => { :action => :search }) %>
    <div id="results"></div>

and I have changed this and that parameter and I know how and where to
put the elements to WRITE some HTML, but I’m still clueless about
getting some real work done, i.e., opening a socket, sending XML,
receiving XML, sending, receiving, etc. Then I can write.

I suspect I have to use these statements, but I’m lost regarding whether
they go in views, models, layouts are they actions, or modules or
helpers

require “socket”
STDOUT.flush
s = TCPSocket.open(“nnn.nnn.nnn.n”, 9000)

Just a little guidance or pointing me to an example and I bet I can work
it out.

Basically, I need to:

  1. When a button is pushed [link_to_remote?? ]

  2. Open a socket to another server (eventually I guess I’ll do this
    once ahead of time) Hmmm…I will do it ahead of time now (but where
    does the code go (this is really my major stumbling block)? Does it go
    in my index (but that’s all HTML, is it a helper that is called at the
    beginning of index?)

  3. Send XML command that other server understands

  4. Listen for response

  5. Unwrap the response and print data on page

  6. Once I have this figured out, I will substitute file contents for
    the returned data, but just getting the data will be a real victory.

Thanks…again, I don’t expect anyone to write my code, just help me
with a map of how one creates actions that are not HTML builders.

Dave

2

David-

I do something similar on one of my sites. I actually use standard

http to fetch data from remote servers on the backend though, but you
could easily use sockets instead. You should make a model class that
doesn’t inherit from ActiveRecord and put the socket connection code
in there. For example:

class SockServ

def self.transact(xml)
# open a socket here and send the data in the xml var
# read from the socket the response and use it as the return
value for this method
end

end

Then you can use this just like any other model. So say you have

some xml to send to your socket server in params[:xml]. You can use
it in your controller like so:

def some_action
@response = SockServ.transact(params[:xml])
end

And thats all there is to it. You can just use it like any other

data model by abstracting away the socket connection stuff. The key
is to write your methods in the SockServ model with the self prefix
so you can call them with SockServ.my_method syntax.

Cheers-
-Ezra

On Feb 14, 2006, at 4:52 PM, David T-L wrote:

no examples. I’ve poured over the forum list, too.
and I have changed this and that parameter and I know how and where to
STDOUT.flush
does the code go (this is really my major stumbling block)? Does
6. Once I have this figured out, I will substitute file contents for

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732