[erlang-questions] Flash client communication with Erlang Server problem

[Steve Vinoski]

On 1/4/09, Ryan Lepidi <ryeguy1@REDACTED> wrote:
> This is an erlang problem, it seems. I have this code to test the client
> sending data, written in Actionscript 3:
>
>
> Code:
> var socket:Socket=new Socket("localhost", 2345);
>  socket.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, connected);
>
>  private function connected(event:Event):void {
>      socket.writeInt(12); //packet length, should be correct? 4 bytes each?

Sending a packet length isn't needed given your Erlang code, since you
specify {packet, 0}. If you want packets to have a 4-byte length, you
should specify {packet, 4} in your server.

>      socket.writeInt(3);
>      socket.writeInt(6);
>      socket.writeInt(9);
>      socket.flush();
>  }

Just curious: are these integers written big-endian or little-endian?

>  Then I have this small server, written in Erlang:
>
>
> Code:
> start_nano_server() ->
>      {ok, Listen} = gen_tcp:listen(2345, [binary, {packet, 0},
>                                   {reuseaddr, true},
>                                   {active, true},
>                                  {packet_size, 128}]),
>      {ok, Socket} = gen_tcp:accept(Listen),
>      gen_tcp:close(Listen),
>      receive_data(Socket, []).
>
>  receive_data(Socket, SoFar) ->
>      receive
>      {tcp,Socket,Bin} ->
>          receive_data(Socket, [Bin|SoFar]);
>      {tcp_closed,Socket} ->
>          Bytes=list_to_binary(reverse(SoFar)),
>          io:format("~p~n",[Bytes])
>      end.
>
>  Now, no matter what I send from the client, I ALWAYS get
> [<<0,0,0,4,0,0,0,32>>] as the response.

By "response" here, do you mean that your io:format call in your
tcp_closed clause always prints <<0,0,0,4,0,0,0,32>> ? Also, just to
be clear, are you really seeing [<<0,0,0,4,0,0,0,32>>], i.e., a binary
within a list, or are you seeing just a binary?

> I can try writing bytes to the
> socket directly instead of ints, and I get the same thing. I can write more
> or less data, same result. UTF strings same result. Even when specifying "4"
> as the packet header length, I just get the same consistant result of
> [<<0,0,0,32>>] instead. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong here.

I took your code, compiled it with R12B-5 on OS X, and ran an Erlang
client against it that did what your ActionScript code does, and it
worked as expected. I ran a similar Python client against it, and that
worked as expected too. I don't have ActionScript to try. So either
the ActionScript client isn't doing what you think it is, or maybe
some other client is interfering on that port (maybe try another
port), or you're not showing us all the code.

Have you tried using wireshark to see what's actually going across the network?

--steve