From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2005-10-18T12:42:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Roxy 0.1 - Remote Proxy Objects w/ type & method signature impersonation and w/ remote block yields.

On Oct 17, 2005, at 8:03 AM, Jeff Wood wrote:

> Hey folks.
>
> I know a number of people are/were interested in this.
>
> I've just requested the rubyforge project for Roxy.
>
> If you've watched the ruby-talk mailing list over the past few weeks,
> I've been having a discussion with a number of people about
> implementing clean proxy objects.  Ones that don't hide the signatures
> of the objects they are meant to impersonate.
>
> Anyways, I've built what I believe is version 0.1 of the project. It
> even works with blocks (see the snippets below). And, since the object
> impersonates the remote, irb's auto-completion works for remote
> objects.
>
> So, as soon as the rubyforge folks validate the project, I will get
> things posted for all to help make even better.
>
> ... until then, I'll simply wet your appetite with the following:
>
> -- SCRIPT: server.rb --
>
> require 'roxy'
>
> my_array = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]
> server = RoxyServer.new( "hostname", 4242, my_array )
> trap( "INT" ) { server.stop_server }
> server.start_server.join
>
> -- END: SCRIPT --
>
> -- SCRIPT: client.rb --
>
> require 'roxy'
>
> obj = Roxy.new( "hostname", 4242 )
> obj.class #=> Array
> obj.methods # returns list of Array instance methods
> obj.map { |c| c*2 } #=> [ 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 ]
>
> -- END: SCRIPT --
>
> Let me know what you think. I'm getting things posted as quickly as  
> possible.

Roxy looks like it reimplements a significant portion of DRb.  Have  
you thought about making Roxy simply a DRb server?  You'll save lots  
of code and can get auto-discovery for free.

> Additional features I plan to implement include allowing for ANY
> Socket object to act as medium for communication, that way people can
> override it with whatever protocols they would like to use.

DRb gives you this for free :)

> A known limitation is that ONLY the first call of a chain (
> obj.call.call.call ) will be executed remotely, the rest will be
> executed locally on the result values.

With DRb you can (supposing each #call returns obj) keep all calls  
remote through DRb::DRbUndumped.

-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
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