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You surely seem to know better than me. And I've never parsed FTP output directly, so maybe I shouldn't have come this far in this thread, but what I'm really h
by gwn7 8y ago
You surely seem to know better than me. And I've never parsed FTP output directly, so maybe I shouldn't have come this far in this thread, but what I'm really having difficulty to understand is that; come on, is it really THAT bad? It's just plain text with columns after all.
In my limited understanding, the only parameters that can change is the separator and the number of columns. How hard can it be to establish a straightforward convention? Or why are we being judged so hard, despite the fact that we are advocating to use the protocol in a consistent, straightforward way; just because some people apparently made very bad technical decisions in the past?
In the web you can build a universe if you want. The API surface of it is gigantic compared to FTP. I like to use the simplest technology I can for the purpose at hand. And if the servers I use are outputting straightforward payloads, I don't have to care about what stupid things people did in the past.
- gwn7 8y agoSelf-criticism: I realized that I'm making the mistake of thinking that all we can serve over HTTP is HTML+Javascript+CSS. But anybody can easily serve structured JSON over HTTP, or any other clear format, like you pointed out: > and in a modern system you'd just honor a .json (or Accept header) that would give you the result as a trivially parsed array HTTP is not tightly coupled to HTML+Javascript+CSS. I guess I acted a bit defensive on this one because I hate the usual bloat that the web brings and suffered much from it. Anyway. Your approach would be to serve JSON over HTTP then, I guess. Would you have any other recommendations to for this apart from JSON over HTTP? Are there other simple and viable alternatives?
- tptacek 8y agoMy preferred approach for command/control and metadata (like directory listings) would be JSON. HTTP already does file upload/download just fine, and there's no JSON involved there.
- pvg 8y agoYou people are summoning Clearcase/Clearcase Attache with nary a thought of the dark ancient forces you are meddling with. Stop before it is too late!