2005-10-06
javascript hell
I currently have a distributed monitoring application for which I need a central status..
excellent I thought I could get each server to serve a XML file of it's status and have the client HTML poll each seperate machine and display it in a nice form which auto updates each servers status every X minutes.. no need for a central server.. just let the client do all the merging.
well unfortunatly It isn't as easy as I thought.
attempt #1 .. use XMLHttpRequest.. bzzt no soup for you.. it doesn't work across hostnames
attempt #2 .. use hidden IFrames.. load them up and have the content notify the parent when it changes .. bzzt.. damn security.
I don't want to have the main page grab the status from the children.. as I don't know when the children will have the data ready for reading by the parent.
so now my only recourse is:
- load the status as a seperate javascript file on the page. and load them up as variables.. I'm thinking that this will work
or
- use mod-proxy to create URLs on each distributed server which reference the other servers.. which isn't going to work as they might not have access to each other ;(
if only the javascript security feature could allow me to turn off all this silly stuff..(or ask the user surfing the page)