Here is my problem: I need to create a discord bot that uses speech recognition to recognize voice commands and send the recognized strings to a Java program (a Spigot Minecraft plugin in this case) from that bot/python program. I've scanned all over and I couldn't find any suitable methods to do this. The only thing that I can think of is creating a file with the necessary data inside it or its name and use that as a "bridge" between the bot and the plugin, but I don't think it's a very orthodox or suitable method. (I tried jython, but it's stuck to python2.7 as far as I know).
I assume we are talking about separate Python and Java processes since you found Jython to be not useful for your case. I think there are really two questions in this: (a) how to get data from Python to Java and (b) what format to use.
For (a) you could use a named pipe or domain sockets (I believe they now also exist on Windows). For the differences between these two inter-process communication abstractions see here. Another option would be TCP but unless there is a possible scenario where the processes reside on different machines this is not likely to be the best.
The answer to (b) depends a bit on the nature of the data. JSON could be an option but you might also want to look at alternatives that might be faster. The ones that come to my mind are Apache Thrift and Google's Protocol Buffers.
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I need to pass data between c++ program and a Java GUI that is showing that data. I can put that data in a class but the c++ program could be running on linux(raspberry pie) and java may or may not be on windows. What options do i have?
Kindly help me for same machine processes and also if they are on different machines.
P.S.
On different machines internet connection is available.
You may want to implement some serialization.
I suggest using a simple textual serialization format like JSON (but you might consider also YAML or even XML). There are many JSON libraries available, like jansson (in C), JsonCpp (in C++) and several for Java.
Of course, you need some form of Inter-Process Communication. This can be sockets or pipes. Read e.g. Advanced Linux Programming or some other tutorial. Maybe have some Event Loop (e.g. libev, libevent) or even use JSON-RPC (or perhaps some HTTP server library)
You could use binary serialization like XDR or using libs11n but it is usually not worth the trouble.
I would like to invoke a paste operation with my java application. Is this possible without using Robot?
For example, the application would invoke a paste operation every so often, so when I am writing in notepad, I would see the contents of my clipboard.
JAVA APP Notepad
clipboard.paste() --------> clipboardContents
It sounds as if you're trying to use Java to interact or partially drive another application (such as Windows NotePad) and paste to that application, and if so there are several possible solutions, one being use of Robot, another having Java make operating system calls, though this can't be done directly with just core Java and would require use of either JNI, JNA or other platform-specific non-core utility programs such as AutoIt (if this is for Windows).
Why are you dead set on not using Robot? Can you explain your needs in greater detail?
Edit
regarding your comment:
I want to explore alternatives to Robot, as my client irrationally rejects Robot.
Since this appears to be for a Windows platform, you might consider exploring the Windows API and the API for whatever non-Java program you're trying to drive (if one exists), and then using JNA to interact with it. The Windows User32.dll would allow you to get the Window handle (hWnd) of the application that you're trying to drive, which may be necessary for this to work.
It's hard to give more specific advice without more specific information from you about your problem though.
Edit 2
regarding your comments:
I would like the app to be platform independent.
Well, Robot comes to mind then. You might want to have a sit-down with your client to find out what they dislike so much about Robot, and then gently explain that it might offer the best path towards a platform-independent solution.
Are there examples for JNA and/or JNI? I'm not familiar with either.
Yes there are lots of examples on this and other sites, and Google will help you find out more. JNA is a bit easier to work with as it doesn't require you to create a C bridge program, but it can be a little slower than JNI, and doesn't work directly with C++ code (as far as I know).
Edit 3
regarding your comments:
I have a serial port listener (java app). I need to provide its contents onto a web browser. Clipboard seemed to be a way to do it.
And this is why it's so important for you to provide the context of your problem rather than what you think your code solution should be.
Communicating between applications is not an easy thing to do, and often Java is not the best tool for this since as it is designed to be as platform agnostic as possible, it does not provide tools that allow for easy integration with low-level OS functions. I don't know the best way to solve your problem, but my intuition tells me that using clipboard may not be the way to go. Much may depend on which web browser you're talking about, whether it has some sort of API that allows for interface with other programs, things I know little about. Also where is your program sitting? On the user's computer? Have you considered using a Java web browser library of some type, creating your own specialized web browser program, and obtaining the data directly from your serial port listener (again, I have not done this myself, but have seen it described on SO)?
I don't understand how bridging to a C program will help me.
I'm not suggesting this. This would only be needed if you used JNI, something I avoid since JNA is much easier (at least for me).
We've got Java and C++ implementations of our product, which is a distributed messaging system.
I'm writing a framework to run a system test across multiple servers. I need our "test coordinator" process to send instructions to each server telling it what to do (e.g. send 100 sample messages, or wait for a message, etc).
I'd really like to implement this by sending a script to each server containing its instructions. This allows me to create dumb test servers, with all the intelligence embedded in the test instructions.
If all my servers were Java I'd write this in Groovy or a similar language. But I'd like our C++ implementation to parse the same script. I'm wondering if I could execute Javascript to call Java/C++ classes to send messages etc.
Is there a neat way of doing this?
If all else fails I'll create an XML format to declaratively contain the test parameters (rather than imperatively containing the test instructions). But this would require the test servers to contain more test-specific intelligence than I'd like.
Any advice gratefully received.
Maybe have a look at LUA. It is well supported in C++ and it seems like there is support for Java as well (see this question)
There are JavaScript parsers for C++ and Java available, so that's definitely something you could use; I don't think that it's a good idea however: the Javascript code can of course interact with your Java code and your C++ code; the problem is, if you want your Javascript code to be ignorant of whether it runs on the C++ or Java basis, it doesn't actually make much sense to call Java/C++ from it, since these calls are again language- (and even engine-)specific.
The simpler solution might be to use a declarative format as you say, but I wouldn't go for XML unless the data needs to be exchanged with a broader audience; instead I'd use e.g. JSON, which is supported very nicely on Java and C++
The best solution (albeit probably also the one involving the highest effort to develop) is probably to develop your own DSL (domain specific language), and parsers for it in both C++ and Java.
This is the kind of inter-operability WSDL was originally designed to facilitate. I'm not sure why you'd want to invent an XML format to do what SOAP already does. I mean, you could, but it'd be a maintenance nightmare for the next guy. Plus, introducing another programming language (which is client side, unless you want to add NodeJS into the mix) to act as a glue layer between the two increases the complexity of the system.
What I would do is:
define a high level language agnostic interface
create implementations for the interface in Java and C++
If you're sending commands to the servers, it may be appropriate to look into using the Command pattern to encapsulate the set of known commands (which I assume is enumerated in your requirements). You can use Batch Commands using Composite.
Then your "Test Coordinator" would build a batch command, send it to the server of choice using the declared service, and your implementations could process those commands in language specific ways. Depending on the types of commands your system has, it may be appropriate to have each implementation delegate to Ant or Make.
You could consider using CORBA too... :)
can I call Java from Node.js via JNI? Are there any examples?
You should try the node-java npm module which is a well-written wrapper over JNI.
node-jave doesn't appear to (yet) have broad adoption, but playing with it, I've been impressed with how straightforward and robust it has been.
It's as simple as:
var list = java.newInstanceSync("java.util.ArrayList");
list.addSync("item1");
list.addSync("item2");
console.log(list.getSync(1)); // prints "item2"
You can do just about anything with your embedded JVM - create objects, call methods, access fields, etc.
There is a slight impedance mismatch between Node and Java, so if you are going to interact with something complicated, I'd recommend writing most of your interactions in Java and exposing a simpler interface across the Node/Java barrier. It just makes for easier debugging that way.
--- Dave
p.s., RealWorldUseCase(tm): I worked at a place that had a pretty complex (and spaghetti-coded) protocol between multiple browser clients and a Java-based service. I wrote a pretty sweet test-harness which used jsdom to host N simulated browsers and used node-java as a wrapper around the Java service code. It was trivial to shim out the transport interfaces, both in JS for the clients, and in Java for the service, so whenever any of these things sends a message, I capture that and stick it in a queue for probabilistic delivery to the intended target (ie, I virtualized the network). In this way, I could run a full-on simulation of multiple clients interacting with and through a Java service, and run the whole thing inside a single process without any wire communication. And then I could do fun stuff like deliberately reorder message deliveries to make sure the code was resilient to timing bugs. And when a bug was discovered, I had the message orderings logged and could reproduce them to repro the bug. Oh, and the whole thing set up and ran a pretty complex scenario with a few thousand lines of logging and finished in under 1 second per run. 2-weeks well spent. Fun stuff.
RealWorld Use Case #2: selenium-inproc - a module that wraps the SeleniumRC JAR file providing a node interface to browser automation testing w/ Selenium without having to run yet another localhost service.
That looks tricky. Node.JS runs on the Google Chrome JavaScript engine V8. What you will have to do is to create a V8 C++ binding (v8 c++ Crash Course shows an example) that starts a JVM and does all the JNI handling.
I think you might be better off letting a JavaServer and Node.js communicate via the network (someone wrote an example for using RabbitMQ for Java/Node.js message based communication). Here, JSON would be a great data exchange format (if you trust your Java server produces proper JSON you can just eval() it in Node).
I think what you are looking for is a native extension to use as a bridge. Although I don't have an example of what you are saying, I do have an example on how to call a C++ extension using Node.JS
https://github.com/jrgleason/NodeJSArduinoLEDController
I am not aware of all the details of Node.js but i am assuming that your mentioning of JNI is actually the Java Native Interface. One can only use JNI from Java, so imho it does not make sense to access Java from JNI if you are not already in java.
It would appear that this is the wrong approach, and you need to search the Node.js doco for their integration chapter...
I wonder if it is possible at all. but even if it is possible I imagine it is hard to implement and I am certain that nobody has done that yet.
how about using a named pipe to communicate between processes(java and node.js) ?
I'm trying to make an java application to manage Linux servers from a web interface.
It is a bad idea to perform each task by calling bash shell ?
Are there any other options other than those to use C, Perl or another language?
It's not necessarily a bad idea to use bash to do the actual work. It would help if you gave us more of an idea what exactly the web interface was changing.
Java in particular does not provide much system-specific controls, because it was designed as a cross-platform language, so putting specific platform tools in would go against it's purpose.
You could certainly do it that way. Ideally you'd open up a port and accept specially crafted, specific actions which perform only the intended actions (an interface server) through a socket library.
I should think that the disadvantage(s) of calling Bash scripts for your commands is all related to error handling and return values. Each of your Bash scripts will need to return sensible, useful information to the Java app in the case of failures (or even successes). And you'll probably want a common interface for that such that each Bash script, no matter its function, returns the same types so that the Java can interpret it easily.
So, in that sense, making the changes from your Java program reduces the complexity of handing the information back and forth. On the other hand, if Bash is easier for you, you may find it more fast and flexible.
Opening up a single bash shell and sending commands (and properly parsing results) shouldn't be bad. It does tie your program to a single OS and even a single shell, but that's the nature of what you are trying to do.
What I wouldn't do is open a shell for each command and close it after each result. It seems to me that would cause unnecessary thrashing when many commands were executed in a row.
Security concerns jump at me. If you have a form like "type command" then someone clever could exploit some things. For example "configure network" is fine but "configure network; install rootkit" can be typed because a semi-colon allows commands to be chained.
All in all, this is not tight integration. If this is a personal project, go for it. It's a good learning project to turn a procedural script into a java program. If this is a serious effort to recreate the many various webapp admin tools there are, I'd seriously suggest skipping this. The VPanel/CPanel things I've seen I hate. There used to be a php based linux admin thing that looked ok but I just find them easily to learn, easy to outgrow because the net and community is full of command line knowledge.
If you are trying to automate a large deployment, look at the ruby-based puppet. It looks really neat.
I have a socket server were I perform different operations (using ifconfig by calling shell for example) and I plan to integrate an client in a JSF application.Because I'm not experienced ant I intend to make it my graduation project, but I'm not so sure if calling bash from java to configure a linux box is a good solution.
Java does have some Linux-configuring classes (well, at least, OpenJDK does). Check OperatingSystemMXBean or something like that.
You're beter to write your own server configuration utility in the language you prefer, sanitize it, make it secure and then call it via bash from your java app.
There are two questions here:
Should you try to do the configuration work in Java, or should you externalize it?
Assuming that you have externalized it, should you use bash scripts.
In this case, the answer to question 1) depends. This kind of thing can be difficult to implement in pure Java. This leaves two choices; externalize the task using a Process, or try to do it in a native code library via JNI or JPA. The latter approach is complicated and gives you JVM crashes if you make a mistake, so I would rule that out.
On the other hand, if you can find a good standard or 3rd party Java API that does what you need (without infesting your JVM with flakey JNI, etc), you should use that.
The answer to 2) is that bash scripts will work as well as any other scripting language. I think that using scripts gives you a bit more flexibility. For example, if you need to do things to compensate for differences in the different flavours of Linux, UNIX or maybe even Windows (!) you can put this into the externalized scripts. (A corollary is that the scripts need to be configurable, so don't embed them in your source code!)
Another alternative might be to run the commands (e.g. ifconfig) directly, using a fully qualified command name and supplying the arguments as an array of strings, etc. But unless your app is going to run the external command 100s of times a minute, it is probably not worth the (Java) coding effort and the loss of flexibility / configurability.
A lot of the response would depend on why you're doing this and why other more obvious solutions aren't possible. Knowing why you would choose to roll your own as opposed to installing Webmin would be good, or why you're choosing to use Web UI at all as opposed to VNC to control the box. There are some obvious responses to the later (firewall issues for instance), but there's no immediately obvious reason for the former. Without knowing more about the requirements, answering questions about implementation details like bash scripts versus perl or C is meaningless.