Please help me to consolidate the status of socket support

[append[x]]

Since about 2 years I have a LiveCode app out on desktop and mobile, that makes use of socket communication (it is a monitoring software for photovoltaic inverters). The Android version was not done in LiveCode, due to the lacking socket-support. The last released version was based on LC 5.5.4. Now I am planning a major update based on LC 6.5 and try to find out, what the current status of socket support is.

My knowledge/experience is:

DESKTOP
TCP/UDP support is included natively in LiveCode for all desktop platforms (Mac, Win, Linux). I made some tests on all platforms and found TCP-sockets to be working reliably on all of them with current 6.x-LiveCode-versions. I experienced problems with the UDP-support, though, while emulating some PuP-protocol. The syntax for dealing with UDP communications is a little hidden in the documentation, but I believe I got it right. I am able to send out UDP broadcast requests (checked with a sniffer) and answers to the request are coming back to the network interface (checked with a sniffer), but are not intercepted by LiveCode. I found this behaviour to exist already in the 5.x versions of LiveCode. This could be a bug or I am doing something wrong. If anyone has experience with LiveCode-UDP, I would be thankful for some feedback, otherwise I will eventually file a bug report.

iOS
There has never been official socket support for the iOS platform. Alas, when the Externals-API was released for LiveCode, a socket example was bundled and this worked nicely for me. I used this only for TCP-communication and never tried UDP under iOS. The syntax of this socket-suite is different to the desktop-syntax, but with appropriate switches, both implementations can be used in the same stack. The socket-external was updated a couple of times by RunRev and it broke eventually for me around LC 5.4.x or so, but some nice member of this forum compiled the sources for me later on, so it was usable until LC 5.5.5. I have no idea about the situation in LC 6.x. Does anyone know, if the socket-external is still usable in LC 6 or if there is any other solution (for example payware from third-party-developers) to provide TCP/UDP-socket communication with LC 6 under iOS7?

Android
There has never been official socket support for the Android platform and since there is no existing Externals-API for Android, there has never been an attempt to provide it from anyone.
Is this correct? Does anyone know, if there is any solution (for example payware from third-party-developers) to provide TCP/UDP-socket communication with LC 6 under Android?

[mwieder]

A global property "allowDatagramBroadcasts" was added in version 6.0 to allow the reception of udp broadcast packets.
The addition of the line
set the allowDatagramBroadcasts to true
will do the trick. See the details in bug report http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10516

I believe mobile socket support is still in a dismal state, although you should check with Monte's externals to see what's new.

[mwieder]

...and sorry, I should have posted Monte's url: http://www.mergext.com

[BvG]

I remember Mark from RunRev talking about getting sockets into the mobile engines... Causing several people to stop trying to get sockets for andriod working. Maybe you ought to ask RunRev how far along they are?

[Thierry]

iOS
Does anyone know, if the socket-external is still usable in LC 6 or if there is any other solution (for example payware from third-party-developers) to provide TCP/UDP-socket communication with LC 6 under iOS7?

Well, incidently managed to compile it and run it for the first time, last night.

So, I can confirm that rreSocket + LC 6.5 + iOS 7.0.6 works, but I didn't test it hard.

If you like I can send to you the compiled external,
but remember, I'm only the messenger!

Regards,

Thierry