Read/Write data to a web site

[Meestor_X]

Thank you, Tim. I’ll give that a try.

With the difficulty of this and the lack of examples or suggestions on doing this on the web, it feels like I’m going about this all wrong.
What is the “normal” and “modern” way to send data and receive data from a client to a server over the 'net? I can’t seem to find any real info on that, so maybe I’m using the wrong keywords or something? I gotta think there’s tons of apps that want to store and retrieve info on a server - I mean it’s what databases are all about, right?

@Tim

I urge you to look into how to properly sanitize the input for your own safety!

What do you mean?

[Tim]

@Meestor_X

What is the “normal” and “modern” way to send data and receive data from a client to a server over the 'net? I can’t seem to find any real info on that, so maybe I’m using the wrong keywords or something?

With HTTP APIs you want to use the correct HTTP verb and pass data through the body.

@Meestor_X

What do you mean?

I don’t assert that the example offered is safe to use in production. I leave researching best safety practices to the reader.

[ivan]

@npalardy

And now we’re back to needing some kind of “server” app as opposed to just a php script

php IS a server app. A multithreaded one, much more robust and feature complete than any Xojo app.

Xojo maybe is good at RAD, but sucks at performance and multithreading. For non GUI apps like in this case, php is a way better option than Xojo.

@Meestor_X

Of course. I plan to use JSON, but I mean passing the data to this script within the URL.
Not sure of another way to pass data to a php file, certainly via URL is the easiest!

if you want to use just the URL and your strings are short enough, you can encode the text to Base64.

BUT it is a lot better to use plain JSON with POST. Also, add a key in the JSON to work as a key, some value that you can verify on the server to ensure only you can send data (could be a simple hash of your salted data)

[JuliaTruchsess]

@Meestor_X

What is the “normal” and “modern” way to send data and receive data from a client to a server over the 'net?

That’s already been answered in this thread. Sockets and FTP or CURL.

[Meestor_X]

@JuliaTruchsess

That’s already been answered in this thread. Sockets and FTP or CURL.

Ok. Good to know. I was just surprised how little info there is on how to do this, thinking maybe people had moved to another method.

Another Dumb question: Does REST have anything to do with this? I keep seeing that word these days. I also see SOAP. I thought I had read that SOAP was an older protocol and no longer used?

[JuliaTruchsess]

I don’t know about “modern”, but I’m pretty sure it’s what most people do most often. Pulling down something by downloading a URL with a socket is trivial, as Beatrix mentioned; maybe that’s why you don’t see it mentioned much. Last time I needed to upload I gave up on FTP (can’t remember why) and went with MBS plugins’ CURL setup, which has worked perfectly for me.

[Meestor_X]

Would using SSL make it safe?

(My site uses https://)

@Tim

I don’t assert that the example offered is safe to use in production. I leave researching best safety practices to the reader.

[Tim]

You will need to look into the best practices for data sanitation. You always need to sanitize input from the internet, you never know who’s doing what trying to get in to your server.

I’m trying to say I don’t know PHP well enough (Xojo code is my day job, and nobody is contracting me to research PHP right now) to know if the bit I shared is safe from injection attacks or similar. Think like the reason we need PreparedStatements.