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Client-side validation
Nov. 22nd, 2013 08:00 pmIn Critters, it's very important to ensure that things work - no one wants their game to mysteriously break.
This is a technical discussion of the current plan - if you're not interested, you can skip this!
There are several basic parts of the Critters system: the database containing the information about the pets & accounts, the 'smart system' which updates the database regularly, the web server, and the web client. Right now, the database is pretty much done; the 'smart system' sort of works (mostly, I hope!), and the web server is "mostly" done. The client is about half baked though, and needs more work.
One key idea of engineering is the idea of "integration testing", where tests are run from start to finish on the product, verifying that components work together. In order to have a working client, we need to have a working server. I don't know that my client works unless the server works reliably. What I'm doing to test the server side of the code is building a "test client". This test client will be a library to talk to the server. Tests can be written with it (or, if I want, play the game on the command line).
The test client is under development right now. I'm writing it in Haskell, a language designed to be very exacting and catch errors. My plan is to release the source code of the test client publicly (Probably under a AGPL license). This way others can use it for example code (or perhaps use it for their own Critters client).
Anyway, back to the code!
This is a technical discussion of the current plan - if you're not interested, you can skip this!
There are several basic parts of the Critters system: the database containing the information about the pets & accounts, the 'smart system' which updates the database regularly, the web server, and the web client. Right now, the database is pretty much done; the 'smart system' sort of works (mostly, I hope!), and the web server is "mostly" done. The client is about half baked though, and needs more work.
One key idea of engineering is the idea of "integration testing", where tests are run from start to finish on the product, verifying that components work together. In order to have a working client, we need to have a working server. I don't know that my client works unless the server works reliably. What I'm doing to test the server side of the code is building a "test client". This test client will be a library to talk to the server. Tests can be written with it (or, if I want, play the game on the command line).
The test client is under development right now. I'm writing it in Haskell, a language designed to be very exacting and catch errors. My plan is to release the source code of the test client publicly (Probably under a AGPL license). This way others can use it for example code (or perhaps use it for their own Critters client).
Anyway, back to the code!
