Python and Napster

[Alex Martelli]

"Moshe Zadka" <moshez at zadka.site.co.il> wrote in message
news:mailman.977910196.13387.python-list at python.org...
> On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > HTTP (and the Python tools around it) is great for file transfer (and
> > suchlike) but it's not oriented to peer-to-peer at all.
>
> Well, yeah, you'd have to implement the low-level part of peer-to-peer.
> But the HTTP infrastructure is usually enough for that: broadcast by
> performing a GET /?file=name to say you have a file called "name"
> and the nameing service turns out to be composed of 302 redirects.

I'll have to trust you on that.  A '302 redirect' is somehow broadcast
to...?


> > I think that actually transferring a file's data and metadata, once
> > you have a proxy for a remote object, is no big issue.  It seems to
> > me that naming, exceptions, resuming transfer (not supported by HTTP,
> > is it?)
>
> You have insulted the prophet: your punishment shall be cruel indeed!
> Of course HTTP supports resuming transfer. SimpleHTTPServer doesn't
> though. I don't think it should be hard to add, though.

I guess I'm stuck back in HTTP 1.0 times.  What's the transfer-resumption
transaction, then?


> An advantage of HTTP is that it will be possible to use the protocol
> with clients not written in Python. If what he wants is simple file
> exchange, there is no reason to be limited to Python at the protocol
> level.

If cross-language and cross-platform operation is desired, Corba
would seem most appropriate to me.  I saw no indication of such
desire in the original post, though -- cross-platform, yes, but the
idea seemed to be to have a single Python app that would handle
it all.


Alex