oop socket server

Bozebo

So, I have formed a very curious socket server in php, designed to run from the cli and intended to host a... mmorpg 🙁 Yes I know php is a very bad choice but I am just playing around to see what it can do. Anyway, you can download the source from my site:
http://bozebo.com/downloads/sources/php/socketServer.zip
(should be cross-platform apart from the .bat files to run with php)
Now, I guarantee many of you will criticise my programming, and as a heads up - it is likely I will not take your advice if it requires deep thought or a lot of re-coding (because I am in a lazy mood). I just want people to see how diverse php can be, and I also want to know if my programming is neat - in your opinion.

edit: there are debug echo lines in there that echo ascii characters into the cli, they would be removed in a full server, of course. (dont want backspace characters and things do we?)

bpat1434

For one thing, I'd use PHPDoc Blocks, not what you have. E.g.

<?php

/**
 * @desc Some description about the function
 * @param integer
 * @return string
 */
function makeUshort($intIn) {

You'd be better off throwing exceptions rather than "die"-ing. I'd probably have put more effort into the DBAL and created something a little more modular. Something like having a DB class, and a mySQLDB child so later if I wanted to add Postgre or Firebird I could.

I probably would have used either an XML file or a .ini file to make the server config. Just my opinions though.

I didn't look much into it, but from the surface, looks pretty clean. Not my preferred code syntax style, but it's understandable (sometimes). Also note that commenting almost every line can be a bit much. You should only comment what you need to. Self explanatory stuff shouldn't really be commented.

jazz_snob

Wow Bozebo that is daring! I've written a socket server in java, and it was quite easy. And perl is pretty nice too. But php? I'm curious, without reading the code, how do you fork connections when they come in? Sorry if my terminology isn't correct. I mean, when a "client" connects to the server, typically the first thing the server does is to start some other piece of code on another execution thread to actually deal with the client.

Bozebo

Ah, nice replies here 🙂. Yes I knew my function description sort-of-things were not very good - they are ok for me but if anyone else worked on the code then problems would arise. About the DB - I intend on running the queries from deep within the code, a bad idea I know - were you suggesting I make a number of query objects, that accept certain parameters from the objects that need data and apply them to the type of sql selected with string handling to form the query? It seems like a good Idea but I personally cannot see beyond mysql in this project, when I work on a C++ server it would be good. I never really thought about my commenting, I do recall wasting minutes deciding how to word comments for something simple though. And yes I was going to use ini files for the config but I just thought my own config system would be pretty ^_ I wanted to practice regex, potentially for string highlighting (though I ended up simplifying it a lot in the end), I may see problems with mine and switch to ini files later. And my choice of php as the language? It's the only language I am confident with - I know a little C but winsock is really weird (I'm working on a windows platform). On the topic of windows, actual process forking would be good but it is not supported in php on windows. It is possible to work with multiple sockets, however, with socket_select and a number of loops based on arrays of ids that need specific tasks solved for the client.

bpat1434

For the DB thing, I was merely saying that you could support mysql 3/4 and 4.1/5 at the same time if you had say two classes that extended a main class, one ofr MySQL the other for MySQLi 😉

If you want a good example of that, take a look at Zend_Db with Zend_Db_MySQL and Zend_Db_PDO_MySQL. I like that framework as I work with it more. The whole DBAL is pretty good with them. You can either generate a query string using OOP calls like:

$select = $db->select()
    ->from(array('alias'=>'tablename'), array('column1', 'column2', 'column3'))
    ->where('alias.column2 = ?', $myVar)
    ->limit(2);

Or you can create your own SQL string and give it directly to functions like:

$result = $db->fetchRow("SELECT * FROM `table` LIMIT 0,2");

It's really really nice to work with 😉 But you said this was a side-project and one for fun. So if it's not "going" anywhere, then I wouldn't worry about it; however, you always gotta think about "what if" I wanted to support Postgre or MSSQL or Firebird or Oracle or SQLite or some other RDBMS.

Bozebo

bpat1434;10884375 wrote:
For the DB thing, I was merely saying that you could support mysql 3/4 and 4.1/5 at the same time if you had say two classes that extended a main class, one ofr MySQL the other for MySQLi 😉

If you want a good example of that, take a look at Zend_Db with Zend_Db_MySQL and Zend_Db_PDO_MySQL. I like that framework as I work with it more. The whole DBAL is pretty good with them. You can either generate a query string using OOP calls like:
$select = $db->select()
    ->from(array('alias'=>'tablename'), array('column1', 'column2', 'column3'))
    ->where('alias.column2 = ?', $myVar)
    ->limit(2);
Or you can create your own SQL string and give it directly to functions like:
$result = $db->fetchRow("SELECT * FROM `table` LIMIT 0,2");
It's really really nice to work with 😉 But you said this was a side-project and one for fun. So if it's not "going" anywhere, then I wouldn't worry about it; however, you always gotta think about "what if" I wanted to support Postgre or MSSQL or Firebird or Oracle or SQLite or some other RDBMS.

sounds interesting, I might make something like that - just like i've made a config system but its not really core.

Oh, I noticed some problems with the server now - im trying to make it accept more than one message in 1 packet (because the client will be intended to build them up each frame and send them off at the end of the frame). There could be for example 3 messages in 1 packet. perhaps move, chat and er... something. each with an op-code and a length. My system for dealing with these can only seem to work with one at a time in the buffer. But - the project isn't going anywhere so I can fix it when im next bored 🙁