RMIregistry + web ?

[misterX]

hi,

i'm currently experiencing with RMI and find it's very nice!
After i've written a multiplayer connect 4 game (working well... On one machine at least!)
I was wondering how to make it work on the web...
The issue is that the RMIregistry must be run on the server! Of course, i can't run it on a web hoster!
So what can i do? Is there a possibility to make the app work without running the registry or any other way to make it run?

[Themroc]

Hm ... a simple web hoster won't run any java app for you anyway, regardless of RMI. Most offer only php, perl, python and some offer java servlets. If you want to run a java app you probably have to  rent your own server or at least a server with a virtual linux env that you can configure yourself.
If the hoster is stupid then you can start your own long-running taks through CGI, but most disable that.

[Herkules]

You could e.g. start your client via WebStart and let once of the clients be the RMI registry. Of course, this makes matchmaking very hard bc. the InetAdr of the reg. has to be known.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[nabetse]

Hi

  if you had a dedicated IP address, your computer could be the server of your game. The problem is that your computer would be running for all the day (and  the night, optional). The game client will connect with your server and you wouldn't depend on strange server.
    But, if you know someone that allows to run your server, please tell me, because I'm in the same situation.

[misterX]

hmm... yeah, you're right -damn i forgot my head-, rmi or not, running the server app will be a problem... and i'm not fond on running the server on my machine...

With this simple notice, the situation and the issuechanged.
In case of a "peer-to-peer architecture", how can i do to... before i continue, i prefer to say that i've absolutely no knoweldge about cgi, perl or whatever.
let's go on, when peer-to-peer, running the game should not be a problem since it'll be on locale machines, same with the registry.
The whole problem is to bring the 2 players together out of the web.

I've no idea of the way to start...
Before, in order to start a game, you needed to "invoke" a method like host.join(this) and the game launched...
The 'host' was got via a server, a sort of main portal to lookup wich stores the people logged in.

Without such a main server, how to find, lookup to apparently unknown hosts?

Hmm... I hope i'm clear enough...
PS: i'm going to look at WebStart in a near future, but i'm not knowing it at all yet.

[misterX]

PPS:

Hi
    But, if you know someone that allows to run your server, please tell me, because I'm in the same situation.

Sorry, i dond't know anyone...  Seems to be a common problem.

[nabetse]

You have said the solution. It's possible to make a java application that connects with a web server (servlets) . Then you could create a new game or join to an existing one. But you should have a database connection in server side to store these games. I recommend to look this free web server (http://www.mycgiserver.com).
 
I send you a small piece of code which I used to connect with the server in a java application:

// We connect with the server and send "url" string with the query
try
  {
       URL url_connetion=new URL(url);
       HttpURLConnection hc = (HttpURLConnection)url_connetion.openConnection();
       in = hc.getInputStream();                 // Reading the servelts response

       int contentLength = (int)hc.getContentLength();  
       byte[] raw = new byte[contentLength];
       int length = in.read(raw);

       in.close();

       // Show the response to the user.    
       String sresponse = new String(raw, 0, length);

       return(sresponse);
     }
     catch (IOException ioe) { };

[misterX]

...interesting, i'll take a look at it, but it'll take time since i never worked with servlets.
thanks