Photon softAP usage?

indraastra · October 14, 2015, 11:53pm

Using photonsoftap.meteor.com, the process still seems to get jammed at the configure-ap step, but this time without any response from the server at all. It looks like the issue may be that the underlying softap-js library uses an HTTP OPTIONS request rather than a POST, because when I modify the python test script to use OPTIONS, I never see a response come back:

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 12:17am

I can confirm that this is working in my React Native application on an iPad running the latest iOS! I’m definitely doing a POST using a JS call to fetch.

For photonsoftap.meteor.com, it’s really puzzling where the OPTIONS request is even coming from, since the softap-setup-js package uses a POST as well:

https://github.com/spark/softap-setup-js/blob/master/softap.js#L242

msolters · October 15, 2015, 2:26am

Great news re: the PR, @mdma! I’ll try to pick this JS thread back up tomorrow and see where I can get.

@indraastra – One thing to keep in mind is that the browser is not actually going to run softap.js. It’s going to run the browserified transformation of that file, and that transformation is going to load different HTTP handling libs, and different methods, all of which depend on the browser it happens to be running on. The real litmus test is to debug (a) the manually browserified resource, or (b) the transformed resource generated by cosmos:browersify, in the Meteor example.

I have a few forks of the SoftAP software where I try different libs to begin with, which produce different substitutions, and different request types as a result. For reference:

	var opts = {
		method: 'GET',
		url: 'http://' + this.host + '/' + cmd.name,
		withCredentials: false
	};

	if((cmd.body) && typeof cmd.body === 'object') {
		opts.json = cmd.body;
		opts.headers = { 'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data', 'Accept': '*/*'};
		opts.method = 'POST';
	}
	
	xhr( opts, function(err, resp, body) {
		if (err) {
			throw new Error(err);
		}
		data(body);
	} );

I’ll post more tomorrow if I get around to it.

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 2:26am

Ok, after some hair-pulling, I tracked it down to a workaround that was mentioned multiple times above - that of needing to lie about the content type. Setting the type to “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” does the trick:

https://github.com/spark/softap-setup-js/blob/master/softap.js#L241

You can actually just replace the Content-length field like so:

opts.headers = { 'Content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' };

For some mysterious reason, this changes the request into a POST and allows it to successfully complete. I don’t know if this is going to break any other clients, though…

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 2:30am

@msolters - Thanks! The sheer number of layers involved to get all this to work is still a bit stupefying. I would have expected the http module to be provided by http-browserify, but looking at ./.meteor/local/build/programs/web.browser/app/client/softap.browserify.js, it looks like the whole http library has been lifted straight out of Node? Is browserification of modules not transitive, or does it somehow realize that the builtin module is browserify-friendly?

Edit: Also, please see my post just below yours. It looks like some kind of form-related content type is required for the request to be made as a POST.

msolters · October 15, 2015, 2:35am

It’s true that, for the most part http should map to http-browserify. That’s assuming we’re using HTTP, and the kicker is that the *-browserify modules typically have a bunch of shims and work-arounds for all the weird edge cases. For example, what if we are using typed blobs as message content? What if we can’t use blobs? What kind of arrays can we use? There’s a million and half little differences that will manifest in the browserified modules.

In same cases, modules may fall back to other modules entirely. If you really dig through that browserified source you’ll see what I mean. (Check out the crypto- and random number methods!) I think the best path to getting something working is going to be replacing the HTTP lib with something whose browserified substitution has as few such incompatibilities and therefore as few hacks as possible. That’s why I made a version that depends on XHR instead.

The upshot here is that with the multi-packet workaround, these header-bugs (which we were so eager to blame in the beginning) are at last actually the problem at hand! Which means we ought to be able to JavaScript our way out of this one.

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 2:41am

This may have been alluded to earlier, but here are some juicy quotes from the HTTP CORS docs to shed some light on the OPTIONS mystery:

Unlike simple requests (discussed above), "preflighted" requests first send an HTTP request by the OPTIONS method to the resource on the other domain, in order to determine whether the actual request is safe to send.  Cross-site requests are preflighted like this since they may have implications to user data.  In particular, a request is preflighted if:

It uses methods other than GET, HEAD or POST.  
Also, if POST is used to send request data with a Content-Type other than application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, or text/plain, e.g. if the POST request sends an XML payload to the server using application/xml or text/xml, then the request is preflighted.

So using any of application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data or text/plain would have prevented an unnecessary OPTIONS request that the server never acknowledges.

msolters · October 15, 2015, 2:43am

Or that blocks the the subsequent packet! This explains why I was able to get SoftAP working on Safari on El Capitan when I used the XHR version with multipart/form-data, but not otherwise.

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 2:43am

So if we can get this (perhaps text/plain would be less of a kludge) into softap-setup-js with some more testing, it would be enough to fix the issues with the meteor app as well, right?

msolters · October 15, 2015, 2:44am

well let’s find out, man!

msolters · October 15, 2015, 2:59am

@indraastra Here, download this and include it directly into whatever you’re working on. It’s the browserified SoftAPSetup but I’ve set the Content-Type as you requested.

github.com

msolters/softap-setup-js/blob/form-urlencoded/bin/softap-browser.js

(function(f){if(typeof exports==="object"&&typeof module!=="undefined"){module.exports=f()}else if(typeof define==="function"&&define.amd){define([],f)}else{var g;if(typeof window!=="undefined"){g=window}else if(typeof global!=="undefined"){g=global}else if(typeof self!=="undefined"){g=self}else{g=this}g.SoftAPSetup = f()}})(function(){var define,module,exports;return (function e(t,n,r){function s(o,u){if(!n[o]){if(!t[o]){var a=typeof require=="function"&&require;if(!u&&a)return a(o,!0);if(i)return i(o,!0);var f=new Error("Cannot find module '"+o+"'");throw f.code="MODULE_NOT_FOUND",f}var l=n[o]={exports:{}};t[o][0].call(l.exports,function(e){var n=t[o][1][e];return s(n?n:e)},l,l.exports,e,t,n,r)}return n[o].exports}var i=typeof require=="function"&&require;for(var o=0;o<r.length;o++)s(r[o]);return s})({1:[function(require,module,exports){
// Copyright 2011 Mark Cavage <mcavage@gmail.com> All rights reserved.


module.exports = {

  newInvalidAsn1Error: function(msg) {
    var e = new Error();
    e.name = 'InvalidAsn1Error';
    e.message = msg || '';
    return e;
  }

};

},{}],2:[function(require,module,exports){
// Copyright 2011 Mark Cavage <mcavage@gmail.com> All rights reserved.

var errors = require('./errors');
var types = require('./types');

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The source is here:

github.com

msolters/softap-setup-js/blob/form-urlencoded/softap.js

module.exports = SoftAP;

var net = require('net');
var util = require('util');
var http = require('http');
var rsa = require('node-rsa');

var defaults = {
	host: "192.168.0.1",
	keep_alive: true,
	timeout: 2000,
	no_delay: true,
	default_channel: 6,
	default_protocol: "http",
	available_protocols: {
		tcp: {
			port: "5609"
		},
		http: {
			port: "80"

This file has been truncated. show original

I don’t have any Photons in front of me right now

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 6:50pm

Is the addition of the content-type header the only change in this file? If so, that’s pretty much what I tested already and confirmed working by modifying ./.meteor/local/build/programs/web.browser/app/client/softap.browserify.js when running the meteor app locally. Sorry if I wasn’t super clear about it earlier.

In other words, it looks like adding that as the content type makes the photonsoftap app work for me on an iPad in Safari, which was failing earlier I’ll make sure it’s still working from my Android device, and I suppose since this will affect anything that uses softap-setup-js, we should test configuring from the command line as well.

msolters · October 15, 2015, 8:18pm

@indraastra Sounds good, and nice PR! Have you tested on Mac OS?

indraastra · October 15, 2015, 8:20pm

Yup, forgot to mention that I tested the meteor app on Yosemite and it’s working!

Edit: Also tested working on an iPhone 6.

msolters · October 15, 2015, 8:25pm

Excellent

nexxy · October 16, 2015, 3:07am

Hey, thanks everyone! This is an awesome thread full of win!

I’ve merged @indraastra’s pull request to the softap-setup-js module, and published it as v3.0.2

Here it is on NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/softap-setup

You’re all awesome!

msolters · October 16, 2015, 4:25am

Edit 1:
I lied to you all before, but it is confirmed to work as of 10/16 thanks @indraastra!

softap-setup v3.0.2 is the version being pulled in at http://photonsoftap.meteor.com now as well.

With the proviso you are using a Photon running firmware compiled against the multi-packet fix, expect the Meteor app to work across all browsers (that a sane person might use) now.

mibrad · October 27, 2015, 5:37pm

This is incredible. I practically jumped for joy when this worked on our iPad.

I seemed to have issue with it on IOS7 but I haven’t looked to see if the issue is my Ionic app or the library yet. Has anyone tested this on older OS versions?

indraastra · October 27, 2015, 6:25pm

If I remember correctly, I ran into some JS compatibility issues on an iPad running iOS 8 and had to upgrade to iOS 9 to get past them.

rowifi · November 4, 2015, 10:19am

Wow, this thread is long, and I don’t understand much of it. I’m still trying to get my head around ANY of the node.js / meteor / stuff that you guys clearly have a great understanding of.

The thing is, I’ve tried following a lot of this without success so far - and it’s difficult to know where to put my effort; making a product ( my livelyhood) or learning web app skills ( just to solve one issue).

Essentially I have an almost complete working application in the Photon, but I will ( like many ) need to be selling to customers who will need to set up the wifi credentials, whilst I as a manufacturer retain control of updates etc.

I need to shield them from ‘Photon’ and use my own website brand to allow set up etc.
It’s this part that is now holding me up.

I really want a browser based setup rather than write android and ios apps.

The cloud based setup http://photonsoftap.meteor.com/ needs to be customisable, to not read ‘Photon’
I don’t want to use meteor as a branded web address and don’t want to pay for another hosting service if possible
I failed in getting the browserify to work so far so don’t know what that will do for me. see below
I believe there is a firmware patch to fix the wiced packets - is this included if I use the web ide and flash a new app?
I have a hosted website with cpanel access, but don’t know yet if it will run node.js assuming I need it.

For me, this is a minefield and a nightmare as much of the web code/application tech talk is not my core skills ( embedded coding in C ).

Is there / can there be a guide to doing this at a basic explanitory level, after all, the arduino type coding and wiring frameworks was supposed to make it easier to code for the target hardware, yet this fundamental requirement for branding and deploying a product seems to be extraodinarily hard ( for me ).

Problems with getting softap to work:

npm install softap-setup
npm WARN install Refusing to install softap-setup as a dependancy of itself

browserify softap.js -s SoftAPSetup -o softap-browser.js
Error cannot find module ‘node-rsa’ from … softap-setup-js.master

Note using Node v4.1.0 is this ok?

Thanks for all the support regardless!!

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Photon softAP usage?

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