[Twisted-Python] Questions regarding serviceCollection and Interfaces.

[Itamar Shtull-Trauring]

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 15:16 +0300, kgi wrote:

>    But in this case, it looks like we're actually instantiating an
> interface class.
>    I can't grok what this "means", especially in light of the fact that there
>    is "MultiService" below it that implements IServiceCollection.

This is interface adaptation, see
http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/core/documentation/howto/components.html for an expalantion.

> 3. What do I gain by using a serviceCollection over an application as the
>    serviceParent of a TCPServer? Come to think of it, what did I gain in the
>    first place with setServiceParent()?

Services are setup as a tree; the application is the root of the tree.
Services let you organize your code as pluggable self-contained parts
that get startup and shutdown events. Of course, for a simple TCP server
that doesn't give you much.

> 4. Lastly, there are lots of examples floating around that describe
>    how each Protocol example can reference its own Factory in order for
>    connections to be able to talk to other connections (for example, in
>    the chat server example). However, what approach should I take when I
>    have a single server with multiple Protocols?
> 
>    For example, consider a simple cache: I have a server which accepts
>    TCP connections from lots of clients, and handles queries from
>    these clients. The server actually gets information from an
>    upstream server, but caches the results that it has already seen.
> 
>    In this case in the server I need a Protocol/TCPServer server to
>    handle the multiple clients, and a single Protocol/connectTCP
>    client for the upstream connection. However, it's not clear to me
>    how I would transfer the data from the lineReceived() method of the
>    server Protocol to the sendLine() method of the client Protocol,
>    since each Protocol can see its own Factory, but not the Factory of
>    the other Protocol.

myServerFactory.clientFactory = myClientFactory 
# and now server Protocol instances can do self.factory.clientFactory