(jcwren) Re: Advice: Network code experiments

[jcwren]

Well, as you no doubt realized, you can do the majority of experimenting one box, since the IP address determines if it's a local or remote socket. That helps a lot, if you don't happen to have more than one machine sitting around your house.

I'd probably start by writing a simple client server application to play MP3s "remotely". You could setup the server to play the files, and use the client as a control panel type application.

Another application would be to write your own mini-web server. It doesn't have to do everything Apache does, just look for a GET, and return a page. Maybe gets the output of 'ps -eax', and display it as a web page. Or something similiar for diskspace utilization. Yes, there's a complete Perl based webserver, but that's not the point. You *want* to reinvent this wheel.

You could also write a chat program like 'talk' or 'write', but allow a secondary channel for sending/receiving files. Or better yet, if you need to learn Qt or GTK, write a two-player battleship program.

There's all sorts of cool things you could do if you turn on the mindset of 'What can I do remotely that I can't now that I'd be paid to play, er, continue my education with?'

--Chris

P.S. if none of these interest you, I can probably find you something around my boat I wanted automated with remote connections. The pay sucks, tho...

e-mail jcwren

[geektron]

hmm. . . all sort of interesting. getting ouput of 'ps' sounds more like the direction of stuff i'd want to do.

i was trying to avoid writing both the client and the server. but that would direction would probably give me the most mileage, esp. since I have a feeling things like IO::Socket would also be of use. . .

and i have two boxes running here at home, so I can actually perform 'real' remote connections. i didn't even think of this one: i can build a simple wrapper for 'rcp' commands - just copy them from my workstation to my webserver/firewall box. i could 'automate' pushing files to my webserver.

and i'm not enough of a nerd. i don't have any MP3s, so i couldn't build an MP3 server. :)

[blogan]

I'd probably start by writing a simple client server application to play MP3s "remotely". You could setup the server to play the files, and use the client as a control panel type application.

This is what I did for a "project" to learn perl. I know my program is far from perfect, but it's a good way to learn stuff. Right now mine is controlled by CGI, but you should be able to easily modify it for controlled by a socket. If you don't want to write one from scratch, feel free to use mine. Be cautioned though, it does have some bugs. jukebox.tar.gz