[Twisted-Python] Problems with PB and Jelly...

[Jasper Phillips]

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On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Sean Riley wrote:

Thanks for your response!

> The "Module not allowed" exception means that you need to call
> setCopierForClass for the class. This maps a server-side class string to a
> client side class so the Jelly knows what type of object to create on the
> client.  For example:
> 
> pb.setCopierForClass('MyApp.game.server.door.Door', RemoteDoor)
> 
> This is usually done at the bottom of the file that the class client-side is
> defined in.

I thought this was what pb.SetUnjellableForClass() was for...  Inspecting
pb.py leads to flavors.py, where I see that setCopierForClass is actually a
reference to setUnjellyableForClass.  So I'm already doing this -- note that
I'm not getting class not allowed exceptions, but module not allowed.

Moreover following the logic through to it's culmination in
jelly.SecurityOptions.allowTypes(), I still can't see how this could affect
which modules are allowed.

It looks like I need to call jelly.globalSecurity.allowInstancesOf()
directly.  Probably in a similar manner to how jelly.SetUnjellyableForClass()
calls globalSecuirty.allowTypes().  Actually, this looks like a bug:
shouldn't SetUnjellyableForClass() call allowInstancesOf() rather than
allowTypes()?

> As far the inheritance, you should only to inherit from RemoteCopy for
> client side objects, not both pb.Copyable and pb.RemoteCopy...

The objects can go both ways, and so it is easiest to set them all to inherit
from both.  This is what's suggested by the documention, so i figured it
shouldn't hurt anything.

> The "setCopyableState" idiom for constructing remote classes may seem
> onerous at first, but its use really is necessary. Distributed objects _are_
> different from regular local objects and the requirements for managing them
> are different too. One of the benefits of PB is its inherent security
> model - it is far more secure and resistant to hackery than using Pickle.
> Pickle's internal use of Python's eval function makes it very scary to
> unserialized Pickled objects on a server...

I do like the security, and many aspects of the architecture are quite nice!

Looking more closely at jelly.py I see that I probably don't need to worry
about setCopyableState(), as it seems to do it's business without relying
upon __init__, and thus __init__ can still be used traditionally.

- -Jasper

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:04 PM
> Subject: [Twisted-Python] Problems with PB and Jelly...
> 
> I'm new to twisted, and attempting to use it for networkable gaming;
> unfortunately I've run into some problems.
> 
> I have a Perspective <-> Referenceable server/client setup, and am trying to
> pass objects between them.  Following the online docs I've set all the
> relavent classes to inherit from pb.Copyable + pb.RemoteCopy, and passed
> them
> all to pb.setUnjellyableForClass.
> 
> However, I still get "Module not allowed" exceptions raised in
> twisted.spread.jelly.py line 523.  Looking more closely, I see that modules
> are not allowed unless passed to SecurityOptions.allowModules(), which is
> only called from SecurityOptions.allowInstancesOf(), which is not exposed
> through pb...
> 
> In short I don't see how the example code on:
> http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/pb-copyable
> could possibly work!  Is it indeed necessary to call allowInstancesOf()
> directly?  Hopefully I am just missing something... :-)
> 
> 
> I'm also unsure what to make of the last bullet under "Things To Watch Out
> For" on the above webpage.  It seems unsure whether using __init__ to
> initialize transferable objects is ok...  Must I truly go and hack all
> my objects to not use __init__, and instead use setCopyableState()?
> 
> This, especially when combined with the need to inherit from pb.Copyable +
> pb.RemoteCopy, seems onerous when compared to the minimal interface of
> pickle.  I would like to be able to simple pass objects of arbitrary
> classes,
> provided I've registered them as UnJellyable.  Hopefully I'm missing
> something here as well!
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> - -Jasper
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