Hello again,
On 1/26/2010 12:56 PM, Versfelt, Charles wrote:
I thought I could "send" nonsense if I wanted, just to
test the ability to send, but obviously in this case it has to be a
real language the server will understand, as I now know.
You can send anything you want to, including nonsense. Just as when you
use the phone. You could call the operator and say "bibbity bobbity
boo, oink dink wham!"
The operator would be very confused, and would probably hang up on
you... but you could do it.
Likewise, if you send the string '<test>' to an HTTP server, it won't
understand what you're talking about. '<test>' isn't part of it's
language. You can certainly send it if you want, but it'll be very
confused, and will probably hang up on you.
However, that assumes you're communicating with an HTTP server. HTTPS
requires cryptography to establish trust, exchange digital encryption
keys, and more. You can certainly do this with the basic socket API if
you want to -- but you'd have to write all of the cryptographic stuff
yourself if you did that. Good luck with that.
Or you can use GSkit (or one of the other 2 SSL APIs included with
OS/400) and use IBM's crypto routines so you don't have to write your own.
Now I know I need a different tool, not the socket APIs, but the
GSKit APIs.
No. You still need the socket APIs... You also need the GSKit APIs.
They work together in tandem.
I was envisioning using sockets for the communications and (also from
another article you wrote!) the XML_INTO and CGIDEV2 to
receive/create the actual XML.
You can do that if you like, provided the XML is simple enough to use
with XML-INTO. In my experience web services (which is what you're
doing, I don't know if you realized that) have XML that's too
complicated for XML-INTO.
XML-SAX could do it, though. Or Expat. (Or the XML parsing wrappers for
Expat that I provide with HTTPAPI)
I imagine I'll use the GSKit API (or HTTPAPI?) for the
communications, and XML_INTO / CGIDEV2 for the XML creation&
extraction. At least I now know the direction I have to move.
Just to be clear... HTTPAPI is *my* HTTP/HTTPS communications tool,
that *I* wrote using sockets and GSKit (amongst other things).
You're welcome to download HTTPAPI and use it, it costs nothing. Then
you don't have to write your own sockets/ssl/xml routines. Mine are in
use by quite a lot of people already, and they've already been tested
rather thoroughly, et al.
There are similar tools to HTTPAPI available from other people as well.
But mine is better. (And I'm totally unbiased!)
But you can certainly write your own from the ground up if you want to.
But since you're a beginner, I think you'll find a lot of things to be
difficult about it.
midrange.com
