SJQv4: Design Discussion

[Spectrum]

Shooting from the hip I'd think more people know Perl than PHP and Perl is installed by default in any *nix environment, OSX included, so I think you should go that route. Plus I already know a fair amount of Perl so I'm a bit biased I think either one would be easy enough for users to implement though.

[tmiranda]

Slugger,

It's certainly your call but I'd go with the one that most "non-techies" can more easily pick up. I don't know either scripting language so I can't make any intelligent comments on which fits that criteria better.

Tom

[skiingwiz]

Stuckless's Sage Scripting Framework supports Javascript, groovy, and python. It gives access to the remote APIs and doesn't require the runtimes to be installed (Since it uses the java scripting engine). Maybe you should consider one of those?

I know those aren't either of the choices that you posed, but I thought I'd share the idea anyway in case you weren't familiar with the sage scripting framework.

[Slugger]

Python was definitely a possibility, it was definitely a strong #3 candidate, but figured it would be the least known of the three to most users. But with this discovery, I think it's about to move into the #1 spot! This is exactly what I'm looking for. Basically, a task will now define two exes: the exe to do your task (i.e. comskip.exe) and an optional python script (or javascript or groovy script) to test conditions (i.e. a script of API calls in Python/JS/Groovy to test things like the channel, the age of the recording, etc., etc.). Got to do a little due diligence research on this, but this looks to be exactly what I want.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

[Slugger]

Stuckless' scripting framework is a no brainer... I've already got it hooked into the SJQv4 engine now and it works like a charm. It comes with support for Python, Groovy (Java like), and JavaScript. I've been writing Groovy testers within SJQv4 and it's working better than expected. This is definitely the final answer on this issue.

There is the possibility to add support for other languages including PHP and Sleep which is, and I quote, "based heavily on Perl". I suspect the 3 engines included will be sufficient for most and those who want other language support can add it as necessary, which is simply finding the jar for your scripting engine support of choice and installing it within the task client and restarting the task client.

EDIT: Of course, other external exes/scripts outside of the scripting framework will also be allowed as testers, but I suspect SSF will be the most widely used, especially once people see how easy it is to use.

[ohpleaseno]

Small request:

Under the current implementation of SJQ, the clients are reported by IP address. Instead of doing that, can you have it report the computer name (e.g. WHS instead of 192.168.1.120). I'm getting to the point now where I know the different IP addresses, but it would be easier if I didn't have to remember it.

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by ohpleaseno

Small request:

Under the current implementation of SJQ, the clients are reported by IP address. Instead of doing that, can you have it report the computer name (e.g. WHS instead of 192.168.1.120). I'm getting to the point now where I know the different IP addresses, but it would be easier if I didn't have to remember it.

As long as your host names are resolvable on your LAN then you'll be able to register task clients by hostname instead of IP address in SJQv4.