Applets and Servers... Servlets?

[garciaa]

I'm wondering why my game isnt working, hoping someone can explain.

I wrote a CheckerClient applet and a CheckerServer application

the client applet connects to the server app on a port 5000 and starts communication via data output and input steams. Client #1 simply sends the server the location the piece moved from and to (4 integers: fromX, fromY, toX, toY) and the server passes that information to client #2.

This works perfectly fine as long as i used my local machine as the server (127.0.0.1) but once i tried uploading to an actual server, the game wont run, it displays, but it wont actually work, it appears as if no connection was made.

When i look at the server application i can see that the server is still waiting for a connection.

After doing some research i saw that this is by design, that applets are not meant to connect over a nerwork, that i should look into servlets.

but before i run off and study servlets which is a completely new concept to me, and seem, at first glance, to be very different from applets, i wanted to make sure that there was no way to have an applet talk to another applet on another machine.

This was a project for school (which ended at getting it to work locally), but i want to host it on my webpage.

i can provide some code if need be, but i dont think the problem is the code since it does work perfectly locally.

please someone enlighten me, or point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Alex G.

[travishein]

yes, applets can only communicate with the server from where they were originated from.
if you changed the applet to make it so it used the server as a proxy to do the connections to the other server that would work, but that is likely a lot of work and changes to the game applet messaging model.

another idea, would it be possible to change the applet into a stand alone java desktop application. then could use something like java webstart with a .jnlp file to have the code downloaded as needed fromyour server but the application runs as a desktop application, and then should be able to communicate with any other server as needed. I think converting applets to frame applications would be less work than reworking the networking to use servlets anyway..

[garciaa]

Thank you, i will explore that option, since im already familiar with turning applets into applications and vise versa.

Thanks,
Alex G.