#16 Support for "http" url location scheme

[Taras Strypko]

I might be convenient to be able to obtain remote IOR
by passing it's [http://] reference directly to
RemotingServices.Connect() method.

This will make sense when interoperating with Borland
VisiBroker 4.5 in a gatekeeper configuration. In this
case IOR is automatically published to a build-in http
server. So the the native code to inititalise ORB on a
client side might look like this:

..
properties.put(
"vbroker.orb.gatekeeper.ior",
"http://server:15000/gatekeeper.ior");

orb = ORB.init(args, properties);
..

In the case of iiop.net it would be hardly more
reasonable to try to impl. it in the similar way, i.e.:
as a property passed to IiopChannel(..) constructor,
then just as a simple url passed directly to
.Connect(), wouldn't it?

Here is how i'd done this:

10 Insert the following lines into switch inside
IiopUrlUtil.CreateIorForUrl() method in IIOPURLUtil.cs:96 :

..
else if (url.StartsWith("http")) {
HttpLoc httpLoc = new HttpLoc(url);
ior = new Ior(httpLoc.url);
}
..

20 Add the following line at the end of return stmt
inside IiopUrlUtil.IsUrl(), IIOPURLUtil.cs:72

.. || data.StartsWith("http"))

30 Add a HttpLoc implementation in a new file
HttpLoc.cs (attached to this msg.)

Hope it aLL does make sense?

[Taras Strypko]

HttpLoc implementation

[Dominic Ullmann]

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Thank you for providing this suggestion.
I'll have a look at this.

There are ORB supporting CORBA requests/responses over
http, i.e. they use HIOP instead of IIOP protocol. This
could possibly be confused with what you suggest.
Therefore, I need some time to think a little bit more
about this.

Do you know other ORBs supporting this?

Thank you
Best regards!

[Taras Strypko]

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Hello Dominic,

I've done a little investigation regarding "http:" in
VisiBroker 4.5 (VBJ)

What i wanted to discover was whether VBJ supports "http:"
location url itself OR is it done by certain pluggable
layer, such as gatekeeper functionality or other bind
interceptor.

Given that a simple java appl. was launched with the
following args:

-Dorg.omg.CORBA.ORBClass=com.inprise.vbroker.orb.ORB
-Dorg.omg.CORBA.ORBSingletonClass=com.inprise.vbroker.orb.ORBSingleton
-Djavax.rmi.CORBA.StubClass=com.inprise.vbroker.rmi.CORBA.StubImpl
-Djavax.rmi.CORBA.UtilClass=com.inprise.vbroker.rmi.CORBA.UtilImpl
-Djavax.rmi.CORBA.PortableRemoteObjectClass=com.inprise.vbroker.rmi.CORBA.PortableRemoteObjectImpl

(which, i suspect, is nothing more then plugging in VBJ support)

Then with the following lines we'll be able to obtain
reference to VBJ's gatekeeper object, that is currently
launched on the server:

/// make empty property collection
Properties properties = new Properties();

ORB _orb = ORB.init(args, properties);

/// explicitly obtain the refence to AliasManager
AliasManager _am = AliasManagerHelper.narrow(
orb.string_to_object("http://server:15099/lib/gatekeeper.ior")
);

/// now can quere any other object with _am.find()
..

Here i've obtained AliasManager reference directly not using
gatekeeper machanics, so, i suppose, here was just "plain"
VBJ functionality involved. (There is another factor that
makes me think it was pure VBJ: GIOP request was submited
with AddressingMode = 0, while with gatekeeper support
turned on it would normally use AddressingMode = 1)

So we see, at least for ORB.string_to_object() VBJ supports
"http:" urls. For iiop.net it would automatically mean that
.Connect() might support it too.