How to send a list of objects in Haxe between client and server? - client-server

Question

I am trying to write an online message board in Haxe (OpenFL). There are lots of server/client examples online. But I am new to this area and I do not understand any of them. What is the easiest way to send a list of objects between server and client? Could you guys give an example?

Answer 1

You could use JSON
You can put this in your openFL project (client):
var myData = [1,2,3,4,5];
var http = new haxe.Http("server.php");
http.addParameter("myData", haxe.Json.stringify(myData));
http.onData = function(resultData) {
trace('the data is send to server, this is the response:' + resultData);
}
http.request(true);
If you have a server.php file, you can access the data like this:
$myData = json_decode($_POST["myData"]);
If the server returns Json data which needs to be read in the client, then in Haxe you need to do haxe.Json.parse(resultData);

Answer 2

EDIT: I'm not still sure if the user's problem is really about sending "a list of objects"; see comment to the question...
The easiest way is to use Haxe Serialization, either with Haxe Remoting or with your own protocol on top of TCP/UDP. The choice of protocol depends whether you already have something built and whether you will be calling functions or simply getting/posting data.
In either case, haxe.Serializer/Unserializer will give you a format to transmit most (if not all) Haxe objects from client to server with minimal code.
See the following minimal example (from the manual) on how to use the serialization APIs. The format is string based and specified.
import haxe.Serializer;
import haxe.Unserializer;
class Main {
static function main() {
var serializer = new Serializer();
serializer.serialize("foo");
serializer.serialize(12);
var s = serializer.toString();
trace(s); // y3:fooi12
var unserializer = new Unserializer(s);
trace(unserializer.unserialize()); // foo
trace(unserializer.unserialize()); // 12
}
}
Finally, you could also use other serialization formats like JSON (with haxe.Json.stringify/parse) or XML, but they wouldn't be so convenient if you're dealing with enums, class instances or other data not fully supported by these formats.