WebObjects without a net connection

[01000111]

I have only just recently started learning WebObjects. Overall I am more than impressed with what it can do. Yet, I seem to have run into a problem that confuses me. I have a Pismo Powerbook 400 that I use for WebObjecs development. I have all the latest OSX and WO updates. My dev environment being a laptop that is mobile (meaning I go all over with it) I thought that I could do my dev work and view it wherever I had my laptop. I found out that that isn't necessarily the case. WebObjects for some reason is remarkably finicky to changing network connections (I move from Airport to ethernet to none).

WO will have problems getting the WO Application Launcher to properly display my WO app in my browser if my computer name changes. However the biggest problem for me is that I cannot view my progress or make a WO app launch if I am without a connection (say sitting in the coffee shop coding).

If WO is connecting from an address like so: http://localhost:49218/cgi-bin/WebObjects/blahblahblah.woa it shouldn't matter whether I have a connection or not right? If all the traffic is going to and from localhost it should not be dependant on there being an actual physical network connection. Am I right?

That's not how it works. I've played around with it some. like so: If I launch a WO app while connected to an ethernet network, the app will launch and run great (by addressing 'localhost'). Then while the app is running and I am interacting with it in my browser I pull the net cable. The app continues to interact with my clicking in the browser, but only for a short time, maybe 2 or 3 clicks. then it gets real slow and can give connection errors. As soon as I plug the net cable back in it can connect to 'localhost' fine.

I'm almost always connected to a network of some sort, but it was just real annoying the other day when I wanted to show my friends how great WebObjects was and the app I wrote wouldn't even launch merely because I didn't have a network connection at the time.

Is this a common error? Am I doing something wrong? Do I not understand how 'localhost' is supposed to be addressed? Can anyone help me?

thanks,

--glen

 

[kilowatt]

this is indeed strange. While I have next-to-no experience with WebObjects, I can tell you that localhost should *allways* work.

I think we can figure out how to fake connecting your PB to a lan (without physically doing so) using a few unix tricks, but first I need some more information:

1) what does ifconfig -a give you when you connect to the lan, use it, disconnecet the cable, and try your WebObjects?

2) in the same situation, exactly what error do you get? Does it take for ever, and then tell you the host is not responding? Or do you get other errors?

3) can you manually connect to WO in the terminal when it does not respond in a web browser?

telnet localhost 41298

where 41298 is the port WO is *supposed* to be listening on...

4) do you get the exact same error when using '127.0.0.1' instead of 'localhost'? And, what about using localhost.localdomain, or your computer's apple talk name?

My idea is to either get ifconfig to say your link is active (even when its not), to set a hostname in /etc/hostconfig, and to enter the hostname into the NetInfo DB.