Comserver: This really should be easier!

[Mastiff]

Some of you guys know me, I'm no wiz at all with Lua. I like to call myself a power user, but I'm no coder. On the other hand I'm not totally stupid. Stupid, yes. But not totally! :roll: And going from a very simple Internet Event Server/Client to something that really confuses me seems like it may be a move that may really scare newbies. I'm too stubborn (or stupid?) to be scared, I bang my head into the brick wall until it breaks. But it seems to me that it should be possible to simply run something like this, without any extra code at all:

comserver(192.168.0.25,20005,"eventstring","payload1")

That's something everybody can understand. The "open connection, check connection, send, close connection, pull your hair out because you can't get a connection" dance is a bit to complicated in my opinion. I should think this culd be done with some kind of a Lua file installed in the luascript directory or some Lua code created automatically. Or can't it? Anybody up for the task? (He said, hopefully...)

[Mastiff]

OK, maybe it should be even easier. What about a function that implements this code:

function ComServer
if( con == nil ) then 
con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder',nil); 
win.Sleep (1000) 
con:SendEvent(param1,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d') 
else 
win.Sleep (1000) 
con:SendEvent(param1,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d') 
win.Sleep (1000) 
end
end

So this is all the code to send to the computer with that IP:

ComServer("test")

I know that's doable, but for me? ops:

I get this:

[string "Scripting"]:2: `(' expected near `if'

[birty]

function ComServer()
if( con == nil ) then
con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder',nil);
win.Sleep (1000)
con:SendEvent(param1,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d')
else
win.Sleep (1000)
con:SendEvent(param1,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d')
win.Sleep (1000)
end
end

a function must be declared with parameters even if there are 0 of them

[Mastiff]

Then that works, thanks! But when I try

ComServer("comtest")

I get

[string "D:\Vidcap G4.GML:\Comservertest\Scripting"]:8: bad argument #1 to `SendEvent' (string expected, got nil)
stack traceback:
	[C]: in function `SendEvent'
	[string "D:\Vidcap G4.GML:\Comservertest\Scripting"]:8: in function `ComServer'
	[string "D:\Vidcap G4.GML:\Comservertest\Comserverte..."]:1: in main chunk

[Mastiff]

Hang on, I need to change something. It turns out that if one of the computers has a reset, it all falls. Which is why it needs to use this error checking (from Rob):

if not con then 
    con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder'); 
    win.Sleep (1000)  -- not sure this is required 
end 
local seq, err = con:SendEvent('comtest',200,1,'a','b',nil,'d') 
if err then 
    con:Close() 
    con = nil 
end

[birty]

if you want to pass the function a string then you will need to declare it to have a string as a parameter:

function ComServer(msg)
if( con == nil ) then
con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder',nil);
win.Sleep (1000)
con:SendEvent(msg,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d')
else
win.Sleep (1000)
con:SendEvent(msg,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d')
win.Sleep (1000)
end
end

[Mastiff]

OK, so with the new error checking that should be something like:

function ComServer(msg)
if not con then 
    con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder'); 
    win.Sleep (100)
	end 
local seq, err = con:SendEvent(msg,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d') 
	if err then 
    con:Close() 
    con,err = comserv.NewConnection( '192.168.0.25', 20005, 'girder'); 
    win.Sleep (100)
local seq, err = con:SendEvent(msg,200,1,'a','b',nil,'d') 
end
end

I will try that!

[Mastiff]

This time I don't get an error, but nothing happens. I'm using the same code for the action - ComServer = ("comtest")

[Mastiff]

Got it working.

Server = ComServer("comtest")