Opinions, please: Repository module

[Cliff Wells]

On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 16:17, andy wrote:
> On Sunday 05 Jan 2003 11:21 pm, Paul Rubin wrote:
> > If you're exposing it to the internet you really better have some security
> > to keep dipwads from taking over the server.

If his home LAN is behind a firewall this shouldn't be a problem.

> Yep, I understand that: it's just a 'first poke' at doing this, and as I said, 
> it's for something for my kids - to run accross our 'family' lan.
> >
> > Something wrong with xmlrpc over http using urllib or something like that?
> 
> Overkill for what I wanted to do.  Yes I looked at xmlrpc, and will definately 
> do so again in the future, but for this, it's way too much: learning curve, 
> complexity (well, maybe)...

I understand where you're coming from, and doing this sort of exercise
can be useful for learning.  Nevertheless I'd suggest using something
like Pyro, which is a distributed object system.  I played with it a bit
and was able to get the basics down in... well, a very short time (it's
been a while since I tried it, but I remember being pleasantly surprised
at how easy it was - I'd guess an hour should do it).  I'd guess the
learning curve will be no worse than for socket programming.

From a past announcement regarding Pyro:

"""
What is Pyro?
Pyro is an acronym for PYthon Remote Objects. It is a basic Distributed
Object Technology system written entirely in Python.

It is extremely easy to implement a distributed system with Pyro, because
all network communication code is abstracted and hidden from your
application. You just get a remote Python object and invoke methods
on the object on the other machine.
...
""" 

> > Yes, MySQL ;-)
> 
> No, not a database.  Already thought about that.  Again, overkill, and too 
> much more to learn (don't know SQL, don't have a SQL server running/set up 
> etc.)

Actually, MySQL is remarkably easy as well, but I still think Pyro would
be more appropriate.

> Just to show you the (lack of) depth of the project this is for, it's a simple 
> 'virtual playground' for my kids, something to encourage them to 
> read/write/type/mouse more.  They were immensely impressed by the simple fact 
> that they could move a 64x64 pix image of themselves round the screen and 
> 'jump' on the icky hand-made gimp-graphics furniture I drew for them.  My 
> kids are 2, 5 and 7...
> 
> This module is to enable me to network this effort, allow simple 'chat' 
> speech-bubbles, maybe animation and sound effects.  The repository only needs 
> to store the x,y co-ordinates of all 'characters' plus some other details 
> like face image file etc.  It may later support different rooms, non-player 
> characters and so on, as demanded by the sprogs.

Again, sounds like Pyro is the ideal tool for the job.  Don't be put off
by the amazing things it can do.  It can do simple stuff just as well
<wink>.  Download it and take a look at some of the examples.  The
documentation may seem rather involved, but to test it out, try the
following:

1. untar the package
2. cd Pyro-2.0
3. python setup.py setup
6. cd examples/quickstart
7. ./pyrorun server.py &
8. ./pyrorun client.py


Good luck,

-- 
Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308
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