Posted: 13 Feb 2012
Categories:
node.js
software engineering
A quick update about the nodeSpider project (my first public node.js project!): It is now based on actionHero.
I announced the nodeSpider project here, and it was what first "sold" me on node.js as a framework. Without going into all of the details of the project, I can simply say that what used to be a very hard sync problem in C++ is now easy to do in node. Since I completed version 1 of the project, I have gone on to create actionHero which used many of the ideas from nodeSpider. Now the project has come full-circle and now implements actionHero directly.
This is a significant update, as the syntax of the outputs has been updated to match actionHero, and hopefully this makes the responses more intelligible :D this project will now benefit from the normal bug-fix pipeline of actionHero.
Here's a new conversation between 2 peers (and the server log it generated) as an example of the updated syntax:
> telnet localhost 5555
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
{"welcome":"Welcome to the Node Spider communication server.","room":"defaultRoom","context":"api","messageCount":0}
say hello from client 1
{"context":"response","status":"OK","messageCount":1}
{"message":"hi! from client 2","from":"ccc158b6b5ab19cff3eca71a876f83fc","context":"user","messageCount":2}
roomView
{"context":"response","status":"OK","room":"defaultRoom","roomStatus":{"members":[{"id":"18c3ab44cb093ba3a400aab48fafcdbe"},{"id":"ccc158b6b5ab19cff3eca71a876f83fc"}],"membersCount":2},"messageCount":3}
roomView
{"context":"response","status":"OK","room":"defaultRoom","roomStatus":{"members":[{"id":"18c3ab44cb093ba3a400aab48fafcdbe"}],"membersCount":1},"messageCount":4}
roomChange secretRoom
{"context":"response","status":"OK","room":"secretRoom","messageCount":5}
{"message":"still talking in secret room","from":"ccc158b6b5ab19cff3eca71a876f83fc","context":"user","messageCount":6}
{"context":"api","status":"keep-alive","serverTime":"2012-02-13T01:18:07.185Z","messageCount":7}
quit
{"status":"Bye!","messageCount":8}
Connection closed by foreign host.
> telnet localhost 5555
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
{"welcome":"Welcome to the Node Spider communication server.","room":"defaultRoom","context":"api","messageCount":0}
{"message":"hello from client 1","from":"18c3ab44cb093ba3a400aab48fafcdbe","context":"user","messageCount":1}
hi! from client 2
{"context":"response","messageCount":2}
roomChange secretRoom
{"context":"response","status":"OK","room":"secretRoom","messageCount":3}
talking in secret room
{"context":"response","messageCount":4}
still talking in secret room
{"context":"response","messageCount":5}
{"context":"api","status":"keep-alive","serverTime":"2012-02-13T01:18:07.185Z","messageCount":6}
quit
{"status":"Bye!","messageCount":7}
Connection closed by foreign host.
npm start
> spider@2.0.0 start /Users/evantahler/PROJECTS/nodeSpider
> node ./spider.js
2012-02-12 17:17:07 | no ./tasks.js file in project, loading defaults tasks from /Users/evantahler/PROJECTS/nodeSpider/node_modules/actionHero/tasks.js
2012-02-12 17:17:07 | periodic (internal cron) interval set to process evey 60000ms
2012-02-12 17:17:07 | data cache from backup file.
2012-02-12 17:17:07 | *** Server Started @ 2012-02-12 17:17:07 @ web port 8080 & socket port 5555 ***
2012-02-12 17:17:07 | Boot Sucessful!
2012-02-12 17:17:08 | socket connection 127.0.0.1 | connected
2012-02-12 17:17:09 | socket connection 127.0.0.1 | connected
2012-02-12 17:17:13 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | say hello from client 1
2012-02-12 17:17:19 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | hi! from client 2
2012-02-12 17:17:19 | action @ 127.0.0.1 | params: {"action":"hi!"}
2012-02-12 17:17:24 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | roomView
2012-02-12 17:17:32 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | roomChange secretRoom
2012-02-12 17:17:35 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | roomView
2012-02-12 17:17:44 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | talking in secret room
2012-02-12 17:17:44 | action @ 127.0.0.1 | params: {"action":"talking"}
2012-02-12 17:17:50 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | roomChange secretRoom
2012-02-12 17:17:56 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | still talking in secret room
2012-02-12 17:17:56 | action @ 127.0.0.1 | params: {"action":"still"}
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | * periodic cron tasks starting now *
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | starging task: Clean cache object
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | starging task: Clean Log Files
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | starging task: caclculateStats
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | starging task: saveCacheToDisk
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | starging task: pingSocketClients
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | completed task: Clean cache object
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | completed task: Clean Log Files
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | completed task: saveCacheToDisk
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | >> pingSocketClients | sent keepAlive to 2 socket clients
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | completed task: pingSocketClients
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | completed task: caclculateStats
2012-02-12 17:18:07 | * periodic cron tasks comple. see you again in 60000ms *
2012-02-12 17:18:11 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | requesting disconnect
2012-02-12 17:18:11 | > socket connection 127.0.0.1 disconnected
2012-02-12 17:18:12 | > socket request from 127.0.0.1 | requesting disconnect
2012-02-12 17:18:12 | > socket connection 127.0.0.1 disconnected
To implement nodeSpider from actionHero, the only significant pice of code replacing the buil-in api.processAction() method with one that would assume an "unknown" action was a "say" command and should do that instead of throwing an error. Conveniently, there is already a method to update/add api methods as part of the actionHero initializer.
Here's how I did it:
var actionHero = require("actionHero").actionHero;
var params = {};
params.initFunction = function(api, next){
// update process action to make all sent strings a "say" by default
api.processAction = function(api, connection, next){
if(api.configData.logRequests){api.log("action @ " + connection.remoteIP + " | params: " + JSON.stringify(connection.params));}
if (connection.error === false){
connection.action = connection.params["action"];
if(api.actions[connection.action] != undefined){
api.utils.requiredParamChecker(api, connection, api.actions[connection.action].inputs.required);
if(connection.error == false){
process.nextTick(function() { api.actions[connection.action].run(api, connection, next); });
}else{
process.nextTick(function() { next(connection, true); });
}
}else{
if(connection.action == "" || connection.action == null){connection.action = "say";}
api.socketServer.socketRoomBroadcast(api, connection, connection.lastLine);
process.nextTick(function() { next(connection, true); });
}
}else{
process.nextTick(function() { next(connection, true); });
}
}
next();
}
actionHero.start(params, function(api){
api.webServer.webApp.close(); // turn off the webserver
api.log("Boot Sucessful!");
});
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