Hi if anyone could help point me in the direction of the best way to create a message board type app where users can post messages, reply to eachother using the app. I read somewhere that the network.request() api could be used but apparently it is too slow. Please help! Thanks!
The network library will be just what you want. This is because you will need to use a server-hosted forum which has web service access to handle the data. Think of it like this forum, but with a web service that your app can talk to. The network.* library is the only way to go. You’ll want to use the asynchronous functions.
righto cheers, do you have any suggestions for a good web server to use? I haven’t done anything like this before so any help / tips would be much appreciated!
Not really. I haven’t looked into that sort of thing.
hmm neither have i… not really know where to start :s
The network.* API is great for communicating with web servers. For a message board, where people “post” things, it will work fine. Where it doesn’t excel speed wise would be for a chat service or for live action multi-player games, where low-latency, small packets of data drive the actions. In other words, network.* has to open a socket, transmit a request, read a response and then hang up the socket. Chat services need to run where the socket stays open for the duration of the chat, then hangs up when done. This would need the lua socket library (which we support) to work.
But as @horacebury said, you have to have a server on the other end. That server will have defined the rules on how you talk with it. You need to solve that issue first. It may involve you writing your own server to do what you want, but that is well beyond the scope of what we can teach you here in the the forums.
Rob
thanks thats helped a lot
The network library will be just what you want. This is because you will need to use a server-hosted forum which has web service access to handle the data. Think of it like this forum, but with a web service that your app can talk to. The network.* library is the only way to go. You’ll want to use the asynchronous functions.
righto cheers, do you have any suggestions for a good web server to use? I haven’t done anything like this before so any help / tips would be much appreciated!
Not really. I haven’t looked into that sort of thing.
hmm neither have i… not really know where to start :s
The network.* API is great for communicating with web servers. For a message board, where people “post” things, it will work fine. Where it doesn’t excel speed wise would be for a chat service or for live action multi-player games, where low-latency, small packets of data drive the actions. In other words, network.* has to open a socket, transmit a request, read a response and then hang up the socket. Chat services need to run where the socket stays open for the duration of the chat, then hangs up when done. This would need the lua socket library (which we support) to work.
But as @horacebury said, you have to have a server on the other end. That server will have defined the rules on how you talk with it. You need to solve that issue first. It may involve you writing your own server to do what you want, but that is well beyond the scope of what we can teach you here in the the forums.
Rob
thanks thats helped a lot