New Webinterface (1 Viewer)

[Maschine]

Please do not skip the 'old' TV engine. I've tried the TVserver3 many times now. I'm sticking with the old TVengine. I think it will take at least a year (maybe even two) before the new engine will be a standard component in MP. There is not yet a way to include all components needed in one installer (this is not possible for SQLexpress). It's been discussed and there seems to be no real interest to make it easier to implement the TVengine. Untill that happens the TVserver/client 3 will not be a standard. If you ask me, it could well be that MP is going to stick with the 'old' TVengine and upgrade it. The TVengine 3 could be optional forever.

Hmm, I don't know where you have this information from and I won't comment it with any other words than that it's simply nonsens!

Supporting the old AND the new TV Engine will lead us to 2 completely different webinterfaces in the backend. I definately won't do anything for the old TV engine. The old webinterface is still downloadable and should work at least in basic functions. And hey, we'll need some time too, until we have a finished/useable webinterface for the new engine. Until then the situation might be completely different...

Is it possible to make the webservice support php?

What do you mean with that? Of course any php script can (IIRC if you installed the soap extensions) consume webservice functions from any given webservice. That's what the concept is about: to have a language-independent communication.

 

[Bram]

For more information about Mono...
http://www.go-mono.com/archive/1.2/
A new version was released this week.

You may call it nonsens. But I have heard no one say the TVengine3 will be the new standard (not now, not in the future). Even not when specificly asked for. The answer is always, that it might or might not be.
Supporting two webinterfaces and communication layers sounds like a lot more work then implement support for the 'old' tvengine.

 

[Smirnuff]

I've had a look at hevea this morning, seems like a very nice app server. Thanks misterd for the information.

 

[thechad]

This is looking good, I think Sam's diagram maps out a good part of what I had in mind.

I agree with most things said so far:
- No need to host in MP process as TVServer is client/server and MP clients fit client server model with ECP2
- No reason to support TVEngine 2 as it is a lot of work for very short term gain.
- Best to start with TV functions first as control framework is already in place and somewhat documented

Where to from here?, do we decide on a base for hosting, (hevera? looks good)

 

[tourettes]

I love the sparkling enthusiasm in this thread.
The only thing that will not help MP, is to make it even more platform dependent. misterd his suggestion to use GPL software for the application server sounds wise. It would also be a good idea to keep Mono (the Unix interpretation of .NET) in mind. Mono developers are really busy with devloping and cross-platform .NET is comming closer every day. The TVserver3 is supporting MySQL and might run on a Unix machine in a while (Mono). Then, only the client will have to run on a Windows machine because of DirectX. Storage of media, databases..... I'm already dreaming of a "MP server Linux distribution"...working right out of the box

Smart choises will make MP much more flexible, now end in the future.

I would love to help writing a webinterface. My only real experience is with php/AJAX (professionaly). I'm learning C#.

TV Engine is also using a lot of directx code. Actually all tv data is processed inside directshow filters. So, I guess we don't have to "worry" about it getting ported to Unix/Linux.

 

[AdmiralUD]

cool, seems like a consensus has been reached on most things...I think the next step is to get people who are interested in helping organized and start dividing up work...

Here are the tasks I see us needing to get started:

1. Remote guide functionality
2. Guide search
3. Remote schedule/browse recordings
4. Explore/build hosting options
5. Remote control functionality.

Im sure there are more...can we get organized on some sf project, either the existing mpweb site or a new one? We can get these tasks down somewhere and get people working?

 

[misterd]

Hi,
I would prefer that we should first try to combine Admirals or Maschines test app with hevea or something like that. This could make things easier, if we know that this approach will work.
I suggest to use the SVN of the old webinterface or the one for mp-plugins. Too many SVNs make everything more complicated.

There was going to be some sort of abstraction layer; I just hadn't gotten that far yet. But you're proposing an abstraction layer used by both the web service and web app right? Can I ask what sort of abstraction you're proposing?

I thought that it would be better if we separate between the web application/service and the back-end systems. The reason is that if there is a modification or technique change in one of the back-end systems, we only have to modify this abstraction layer. The layer should be very simple and more like a wrapper. If we would support TVEngine2 than it would be possible to create such a class hierachie:
- SimpleMPClient (Representing a client without TV)
- ClientWithTVEngine2 : SimpleClient (Client with TVEngine2)
- ClientWithTVEngine3 : SimpleClient (Client with TVEngine3)
- Server (Generall abstract class for a server. Will access db and tv service)
- MasterServer : Server
- SlaveServer : Server
This is just an example and not a final version. The final version can only be declared when we have a feature list and a deep look into the sources of MP and TVServer. My proposed web service than would be very similar to this abstraction layer. Another advantage that if there is the need for a different web service or something else, we have a simple global interface which will wrap the whole back-end systems. I hope that this is detailed enough for everyone.

Regards,
MisterD

 

[misterd]

Hi,
today I tried to create a simple windows form application which starts a web server and host a simple ASP.NET application.
I started with creating an application which uses hevea. When it was finished, I had to realize that hevea can't host normal ASP.NET applications. The web applications of hevea are similar to ASP.NET, but it has it's own controls or you have to create your own control --> You can't use your ASP.NET application with hevea.
Than I thought that I should have a look at my old cassini code and modyfied it a little bit. Now I have windows application which starts a modified cassini web server (additional security stuff and ready for .NET 2.0). This application can host web services and ASP.NET applications. It is very simple and I think that it can easily be transformed in a windows service.

Regards,
MisterD

 

[AdmiralUD]

Hi,
today I tried to create a simple windows form application which starts a web server and host a simple ASP.NET application.
I started with creating an application which uses hevea. When it was finished, I had to realize that hevea can't host normal ASP.NET applications. The web applications of hevea are similar to ASP.NET, but it has it's own controls or you have to create your own control --> You can't use your ASP.NET application with hevea.
Than I thought that I should have a look at my old cassini code and modyfied it a little bit. Now I have windows application which starts a modified cassini web server (additional security stuff and ready for .NET 2.0). This application can host web services and ASP.NET applications. It is very simple and I think that it can easily be transformed in a windows service.

Regards,
MisterD

This sounds excellent, could you post a sample, the source, or both? I could give this a try with my sample later tonight.

 

[samuel337]

Hi,
today I tried to create a simple windows form application which starts a web server and host a simple ASP.NET application.
I started with creating an application which uses hevea. When it was finished, I had to realize that hevea can't host normal ASP.NET applications. The web applications of hevea are similar to ASP.NET, but it has it's own controls or you have to create your own control --> You can't use your ASP.NET application with hevea.
Than I thought that I should have a look at my old cassini code and modyfied it a little bit. Now I have windows application which starts a modified cassini web server (additional security stuff and ready for .NET 2.0). This application can host web services and ASP.NET applications. It is very simple and I think that it can easily be transformed in a windows service.

Regards,
MisterD

Nice work MisterD.

Just thought I'd let you know - I've already got an application for monitoring the web server pretty much done; I designed it for the new version of the web interface using Apache and PHP which never eventuated. So it should be pretty easy for me to modify it to monitor your web server service. The code itself is currently in the mp-webinterface SVN atm.

A screenshot from VS2005 is attached - therefore there's no actual values for the fields. The right side will obviously be altered substantially to show detailed information of the detected clients instead, and the log files of the web server (or the windows event log).

If you provide the service, I can modify it to work with it, if that's ok with you - saves duplicating work.

Sam
P.S. Let me know your SF username via PM and I'll see if I can get SVN write access for you so you can get it in when it becomes stable. Yes, AdmiralUD, I know you haven't been added yet - will follow that up soon.