Communication bug on Mac computers, tested on 5 browsers.

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 28 Sep 2010, 11:00

Hello, it's me again.

So the bug, which we, and you, can reproduce, happens when you sent an Object to the server (smartfox), and the Object returning from the server is empty.
I have tested this on firefox, safari, chrome (which is currently blocked on our games due to another bug), flock and shiira.

I have set up an account for you to test this on, and when you'll log on with this specific user name and password you will also see a white window acting as a debugger which will trace the object sent and the object received.

To test this go to "http://92.60.65.196/super.forza4.html", enter the game using user name "smartfox" and password "123456".
When logged on, enter one of the rooms (which ever has less or no users at all would be best), and once in, click on "crea tavolo" (bottom, green button, the error happens with every action we use to send objects with, but this option is the fastest to test) to open a new table, the tracer will show you what you are sending and what you are receiving.

Try this on a PC, and you'll get what you sent and the object that came back in response, both are OK, try it on a Mac, and you'll see what you sent, but what you get back is "null".

No error messages in the server log, and as I've said, I've tested this on 5 different browsers and they all have the same error.

Please come back to me with some input as soon as possible so we could try and resolve this issue.

Thanks again.

Yuval Lahav.

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 28 Sep 2010, 11:10

Forgot an important information.. we have both the basic and the pro versions of the smartfoxserver running on our server, and both of them have the same problem, meaning the same effect (returning null as the body of the object) happens on either of the systems.

Please let me know of any other information you would need.

Yuval Lahav.

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 13 Oct 2010, 12:15

Guys? please? someone? can you confirm, deny? anything?
I mean, even if you don't know whats going on, can't you please say something so I'll know this got to you and you're looking into it, or don't care, or something for me to hold on to while I wait for something to save our not many, but still important, mac users base??

Thanks.

Yuval Lahav.

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 14 Oct 2010, 06:36

Some new information:

Tested on Mac laptops:

1. firefox version - 3.6.10
1. flash version - Mac 10.1.53.64

Not working, using the "sendObjectToGroup" method, information arrives to the server as null (body of object sent) and is sent back to user as null (firing an error on the server - 2010/10/14 09:41:15.977 - [ WARNING ] [id: 11] (SystemHandler.processEvent): SysHandler -> Bad room id. Action: prvMsg >> java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "" - please note the error was not specific to the message sent but was copied from a stack of many hundreds of error messages, obviously sendPrivateMessage and sendPublicMessage and sendObject suffer from the same fate...).

2. firefox version - 3.6.10
2. flash version - 10.0.42.34

Works just fine, using the "sendObjectToGroup" method works perfectly, message and body arrives with no problems and echoed back to user with no problem.

Please guys, is this your issue with the smartfox client running on the newer flash player version, or a bug in the flash player itself??

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 16 Nov 2010, 12:58

A new update about this issue, since I see no one is responding to this I might as well go on.

Since we switched one of our online games to the Pro server (and once we are good and ready we'll switch all the others), I've noticed that the problem stated here is still present when using the pro server, but, I'm glad to say that messages being sent to and from the server using methods and events on my extension are causing no problems at all, I'm going to switch all uses of "sendObject" and "sendObjectToGroup" to a function I'll create in my extension, and since I know these work, I see no reason why it shouldn't work instead of these 2 methods that shoot blanks so far (again, only for mac and chrome users with flash player updated in the past month).

Hope this helps, if anyone is heaving the same problem, and again, just to be sure, this little ray of light will work only on the Pro version of the server where you can have you own code written on the server using extensions.

Yuval Lahav.

yuvallahav · Post by **yuvallahav** » 17 Nov 2010, 14:58

This is probably the last update I'm adding to this string, as I've done what I planned, and it didn't work, so I worked my ass off, and finally I've been able to pinpoint the problem.

To recap where this problem occurs:

1. All mac computer with a flash plug-in updated in the last 30 days or so, on all browsers (tested on chrome, safari, opera, Firefox), older version of the plug-in does not show this problem.

2. Some PC running chrome, we couldn't find specific version of plug-in that reproduce the bug all the time, and all PC which run Explorer under the Media Center PC platform.

The problem (or what we thought it was...):

Objects being sent to and from the server using "sendObjectToGroup", "sendObject ", "sendPublicMessage" and "sendPrivateMessage" were returned to the client as null.

The problem we finally found out it is:

Object which have in them strings that are xml formatted (for example "<aa>blabla</aa>"), that part of the object will get back to the client as null, and it does not matter if you set the response type to "xml" or "str", so lets say I create an object on my client:

Obj = {};

And I populate it with some information:

Obj.name = "Yuval";
Obj.body = "<XML>nice and lean</XML>";
Obj.shoe_size = 43;

And now I'll send this to the server to be sent to other, in which ever way, if one of my clients is part of the group above (updated mac users, chrome, or IE on media center pc platform), this is what arrives:

Obj.name = "Yuval", Obj.body = null, Obj.shoe_size = 43.

Change Obj.body to : "XML-nice and lean-/XML", sure, it's just a string, no special format, it will arrive just fine to these clients.

The solution of course is not to use xml formatted text as xml or strings in your object, which is stupid, annoying and frustrating, but now we know, and we can work around it.

Hope this information helps someone, and save some time, I would have loved to hear something about this from someone on the site, but as you can see, 0 responses to all my posts on this thread, ho well... :)

Yuval Lahav.