“Simple Cross-Network Scripting (SCNS)”

Simple Cross-Network Scripting (SCNS)

UserLand released a new beta of Frontier and Radio. Both support Simple Cross-Network Scripting.

SCNS was promised years ago, but since then a number of us had almost given up on it. Some things, though, are worth waiting for.

The basic idea is that I can run a command in a scripting environment on another machine as simply as I can on my own. (That assumes that the other machine supports it, of course, and that I have permission.)

For example, if I want to know the email addresses of everybody on the TruerWords mailing list, I can go to the server and run a short script which will prouduce that information for me. I could then make that script available for calling over the network, via xml-rpc. The next time I wanted that list, I wouldn't have to go to the server to get it, I could request it from my workstation.

Still, calling it from my workstation involved a multi-line script to build the paramters table, pass the params in the right format, etc., etc. Now it's as simple as running it on the server. Let's compare. Here's the call I'd make if I was standing at the server:

	email.getSubscribers( "truerwords", "truerwords" )

(Since that example assumes that I'm standing at the server, I don't need to include my own username and password.)

Here's what the same call could look like, now, from my workstation:

	["xmlrpc://www.truerwords.net/RPC2"].email.getSubscribers( "truerwords", \

	"truerwords", "seth@macrobyte.net", "my password" )

This doesn't make anything possible that was previously impossible, but it does wonders for simplifying network-based code. I'm glad they finally shipped it.