<li><ahref="#2"> Working Network Protocol independently with TQUrlOperator and TQNetworkOperation
</a>
<ul>
<li><ahref="#2-1"> Implementing your own Network Protocol
</a>
<li><ahref="#2-2"> Error Handling
</a>
</ul>
</ul>
<!-- endtoc -->
<p><h2> Introduction
</h2>
<aname="1"></a><p> The network module offers classes to make network programming easier
and portable. Essentially, there are three sets of classes, first low
level classes like <ahref="qsocket.html">TQSocket</a>, <ahref="qserversocket.html">TQServerSocket</a>, <ahref="qdns.html">TQDns</a>, etc. which
allow you to work in a portable way with TCP/IP sockets. In addition,
there are classes like <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a>, <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> in
the TQt base library, which provide an abstract layer for implementing
network protocols and <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> which operates on such network
protocols. Finally the third set of network classes are the passive
ones, specifically <ahref="qurl.html">TQUrl</a> and <ahref="qurlinfo.html">TQUrlInfo</a> which do URL parsing and
similar.
<p> The first set of classes (<ahref="qsocket.html">TQSocket</a>, <ahref="qserversocket.html">TQServerSocket</a>, <ahref="qdns.html">TQDns</a>, <ahref="qftp.html">TQFtp</a>, etc.) are included in TQt's "network" module.
<p> The <ahref="qsocket.html">TQSocket</a> classes are not directly related to the TQNetwork classes,
but TQSocket should and will be used for implementing network
protocols, which are directly related to the TQNetwork classes. For
example, the <ahref="qftp.html">TQFtp</a> class (which implements the FTP protocol) uses
TQSockets. But TQSockets don't need to be used for protocol
implementations, e.g. <ahref="qlocalfs.html">TQLocalFs</a> (which is an implementation of the
local filesystem as network protocol) uses <ahref="qdir.html">TQDir</a> and doesn't use
TQSocket. Using TQNetworkProtocols you can implement everything which
fits into a hierarchical structure and can be accessed using URLs.
This could be, for example, a protocol which can read pictures from a
digital camera using a serial connection.
<p><h2> Working Network Protocol independently with <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> and <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a>
op.<ahref="qurloperator.html#mkdir">mkdir</a>( "New Directory" );
</pre>
<p> To see all available operations, look at the <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> class
documentation.
<p> Since networking works asynchronously, the function call for an
operation will normally return before the operation has been
completed. This means that the function cannot return a value
indicating failure or success. Instead, the return value always is a
pointer to a <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a>, and this object stores
all the information about the operation.
<p> For example, <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> has a method which returns the state
of this operation. Using this you can find out the state of the
operation at any time. The object also makes available the arguments
you passed to the <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> method, the type of the operation
and some more information. For more details see the class
documentation of <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a>.
<p> The <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> emits signals to inform you about the progress of
the operations. As you can call many methods which operate on a <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a>'s URL, it queues up all the operations. So you can't know
which operation the <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> just processed. Clearly you will
want to know which operation just took place, so each signal's last
argument is a pointer to the <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> object which was
just processed and which caused the signal to be emitted.
<p> Some of these operations send a <tt>start()</tt> signal at the beginning (if
this makes sense), and some of them send some signals during
processing. All operations send a <tt>finished()</tt> signal after they are
done. To find that out if an operation finished successfully you can
use the <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> pointer you got with the <tt>finished()</tt>
signal. If <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html#state">TQNetworkOperation::state</a>() equals <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StDone</a> the operation finished successfully, if it is
<ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StFailed</a> the operation failed.
<p> Example: A slot which you might connect to the
<p> These examples demonstrate now how to use the <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> and <tt>TQNetworkOperations</tt>. The network extension also contains useful example
code.
<p><h3> Implementing your own Network Protocol
</h3>
<aname="2-1"></a><p><ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a> provides a base class for implementations
of network protocols and an architecture for the a dynamic
registration and de-registration of network protocols. If you use this
architecture you don't need to care about asynchronous programming, as
the architecture hides this and does all the work for you.
<p><em>Note</em> It is difficult to design a base class for network protocols
which is useful for all network protocols. The architecture described
here is designed to work with all kinds of hierarchical structures,
like filesystems. So everything which can be interpreted as
hierarchical structure and accessed via URLs, can be implemented as
network protocol and easily used in TQt. This is not limited to
filesystems only!
<p> To implement a network protocol create a class derived from
<p> Some notes on reimplementing these methods: You always get a pointer
to a <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> as argument. This pointer holds all the
information about the operation in the current state. If you start
processing such an operation, set the state to <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StInProgress</a>. If you finished processing the
operation, set the state to <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StDone</a> if it was
successful or <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StFailed</a> if an error occurred. If
an error occurred you must set an error code (see
<ahref="qnetworkoperation.html#setErrorCode">TQNetworkOperation::setErrorCode</a>()) and if you know some details
(e.g. an error message) you can also set this message to the operation
pointer (see <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html#setProtocolDetail">TQNetworkOperation::setProtocolDetail</a>()). Also you get
all the relevant information (type, arguments, etc.) about the
operation from the <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> pointer. For details about
which arguments you can get and set look at <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a>'s
class documentation.
<p> If you reimplement an operation function, it's very important to emit
the correct signals at the correct time: In general always emit <tt>finished()</tt> at the end of an operation (when you either successfully
finished processing the operation or an error occurred) with the
network operation as argument. The whole network architecture relies
on correctly emitted <tt>finished()</tt> signals! Then there are some more
specialized signals which are specific to operations:
<ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationListChildren</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>start()</tt> just before starting to list the children
<li><tt>newChildren()</tt> when new children are read
</ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationMkDir</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>createdDirectory()</tt> after the directory has been created
<li><tt>newChild()</tt> (or newChildren()) after the directory has been
created (since a new directory is a new child)
</ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationRemove</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>removed()</tt> after a child has been removed
</ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationRename</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>itemChanged()</tt> after a child has been renamed
</ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationGet</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>data()</tt> each time new data has been read
<li><tt>dataTransferProgress()</tt> each time new data has been read to
indicate how much of the data has been read now.
</ul>
<li> Emit in <tt>operationPut</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>dataTransferProgress()</tt> each time data has been written to
indicate how much of the data has been written. Although you
know the whole data when this operation is called, it's
suggested not to write the whole data at once, but to do it
step by step to avoid blocking the GUI. Doing things
incrementally also means that progress can be made visible
to the user.
</ul>
</ul>
<p> And remember, always emit the <tt>finished()</tt> signal at the end!
<p> For more details about these signals' arguments look at the <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a> class documentation.
<p> Here is a list of which <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> arguments you can get and
which you must set in which function:
<p> (To get the URL on which you should work, use the <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#url">TQNetworkProtocol::url</a>() method which returns a pointer to the URL
operator. Using that you can get the path, host, name filter, etc.)
<p><ul>
<li> In <tt>operationListChildren</tt>:
<ul>
<li> Nothing.
</ul>
<li> In <tt>operationMkDir</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt> contains the name of the directory which should be created
</ul>
<li> In <tt>operationRemove</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt> contains the name of the file
which should be removed. Normally this is a relative name. But
it could be absolute. Use <ahref="qurl.html">TQUrl</a>( op->arg( 0 ) ).fileName()
to get the filename.
</ul>
<li> In <tt>operationRename</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt> contains the name of the file
which should be renamed
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 1 )</tt> contains the name to which it
should be renamed.
</ul>
<li> In <tt>operationGet</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt> contains the full URL of the
file which should be retrieved.
</ul>
<li> In <tt>operationPut</tt>:
<ul>
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt> contains the full URL of the
file in which the data should be stored.
<li><tt>TQNetworkOperation::rawArg( 1 )</tt> contains the data which
should be stored in <tt>TQNetworkOperation::arg( 0 )</tt>
</ul>
</ul>
<p> In summary: If you reimplement an operation function, you must emit
some special signals and at the end you must <em>always</em> emit a <tt>finished()</tt> signal, regardless of success or failure. Also you must
change the state of the <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> during processing. You
can also get and set <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> arguments as the operation
progresses.
<p> It may occur that the network protocol you implement only retquires a
subset of these operations. In such cases, simply reimplement the
operations which are supported by the protocol. Additionally you must
specify which operations you support. This is achieved by
reimplementing
<p><pre>
int TQNetworkProtocol::supportedOperations() const;
</pre>
<p> In your implementation of this method return an <tt>int</tt> value
which is constructed by OR-ing together the correct values
(supported operations) of the following enum (of <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a>):
<p><ul>
<li><tt>OpListChildren</tt>
<li><tt>OpMkDir</tt>
<li><tt>OpRemove</tt>
<li><tt>OpRename</tt>
<li><tt>OpGet</tt>
<li><tt>OpPut</tt>
</ul>
<p> For example, if your protocol supports listing children and renaming
them, your implementation of <tt>supportedOperations()</tt> should do this:
<p> Here you must return TRUE, if the connection is up and okay (this means
operations on the protocol can be done). If the connection is not okay,
return FALSE and start to try opening it. If you cannot open the
connection at all (e.g. because the host is not found), emit a <tt>finished()</tt>
signal and set an error code and the <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#State-enum">TQNetworkProtocol::StFailed</a> state to
the <ahref="qnetworkoperation.html">TQNetworkOperation</a> pointer you get here.
<p> Now, you never need to check before doing an operation yourself, if
the connection is okay. The network architecture does this, which
means it uses <tt>checkConnection()</tt> to see if an operation can be done
and if not, it tries it again and again for some time, only calling an
operation function if the connection is okay.
<p> To be able to use a network protocol with a <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> (and so, for
example, in the <ahref="qfiledialog.html">TQFileDialog</a>), you must register the network
protocol implementation. This can be done like this:
<p><pre>
TQNetworkProtocol::<ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html#registerNetworkProtocol">registerNetworkProtocol</a>( "myprot", new TQNetworkProtocolFactory<MyProtocol> );
</pre>
<p> In this case <tt>MyProtocol</tt> would be a class you implemented as
described here (derived from <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a>) and the name of the
protocol would be "myprot". So to use it, you would do something like
<p> That's all. The connection to the <ahref="qurloperator.html">TQUrlOperator</a> and so on is done
automatically. Additionally, if the error was really bad so that no
more operations can be done in the current state (e.g. if the host
couldn't be found), call <tt>TQNetworkProtocol::clearOperationStack()</tt><em>before</em> emitting <tt>finished()</tt>.
<p> Ideally you should use one of the predefined error codes of <ahref="qnetworkprotocol.html">TQNetworkProtocol</a>. If this is not possible, you can add own error codes
- they are just normal <tt>int</tt>s. Just be careful that the value of the
error code doesn't conflict with an existing one.
<p> An example to look at is in qt/examples/network/ftpclient.
This is the implementation of a fairly complete FTP client, which
supports uploading and downloading files, making directories, etc.,
all done using <tt>TQUrlOperators</tt>.
<p> You might also like to look at <ahref="qftp.html">TQFtp</a> (in qt/src/network/qftp.cpp) or at
the example in qt/examples/network/networkprotocol/nntp.cpp.
