help with HTTPClient

All,

 Our product (http://www.agilense.com/documents/EA-GraphicalModeler_final.pdf) is built on Squeak. It is essentially a web based case tool which gets/sends its contents via HTTPClient. It is being deployed to a large Solaris based customer and we are having problems in the HTTPClient layer. Solution to this is urgent, I am flying Bert Freudenberg in from Germany tomorrow (Sunday 29^th ) to Colorado to help solve the problem (Bert worked on the Squeak Plugin on Unix). However, it would be very useful to have a team of folks that know the HTTPClient/sockets layer that we can communicate questions with as we work thru the issue. Is there anybody out there?

regards,

 Steve

Hello Todd,

 Thanks for responding. Our application is a “full blow web app”, the back-end is VAST web connect. The Graphical Modeler (essentially a web based case tool) is a Squeak Plugin application (pr file) which communicates with the back-end, providing a different UI for the same underlying content served by the VAST back-end (so we have a “forms” based html UI, and a “LinesNboxes case tool” UI based on Squeak).

The requirements are pretty simple, the Squeak application needs to fetch images, and it needs to get and put xml.  

We need proxy and https support, hence using HTTPClient which relegates proxy and https work to the browser, so essentially the application gets/puts content on a socket.

Colin Curtin had the same (negative) comments with respect to the native HTTPClient in Squeak and said the community was considering replacing it, and the implementations he was aware of are below….I guess yours can now be added.

Squeak native
Steve Waring's
Colib Curtin
LibCurl

My first objective is to solve the issue at hand, which we think is a timing related problem somewhere between Squeak and the browser, but not sure yet. However, since our (Commercial) application relies on a client side application (squeak plugin), communicating over http to the server, we absolutely need a rock-solid networking layer. We also want to move our html UI up to “AJAX style” html UI’s (or essentially getting back to client-server programming using a browser as the client and therefore need that solid networking layer) So, I’d encourage the community to pick the best of what people have done and build a common, solid, HTTPClient layer. FWIW, our application is being deployed throughout a company that lives by the slogan; the network is the computer, and our networking bits do not impress them at the moment. But…the application running over the net is impressive so, hopefully, if we can fix the network bits, all will be forgotten and we can get back to impressing based on what the application can do.

regards,

 Steve

I know that HTTPClient is an awful hack and there are better solutions. I've put some time into killing off HTTPClient and replacing it with one of the better built HTTP protocol stacks.