<div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Mark,</div><div><br></div><div>I've been using your WebSAMP JS library [1] with our WWT interface to the Chandra Source Catalog - <a href="http://cxc.harvard.edu/csc2/wwt.html">http://cxc.harvard.edu/csc2/wwt.html</a> - to send URLs that return a votable or fits file when retrieved (ie the URL is actually a query and not to a file [2]). We are moving to https "soon" so I am interested in any possible solution (once the WWT client is moved over to https, that is). </div><div><br></div><div>Ta,</div><div>Doug<br></div><div><br></div><div>[1] so thanks for that<br></div><div>[2] thanks to a confluence of influences that aren't relevant here<br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 9:05 AM Mark Taylor <<a href="mailto:M.B.Taylor@bristol.ac.uk">M.B.Taylor@bristol.ac.uk</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Dear SAMP users,<br>
<br>
the problem of Web SAMP and HTTPS has been under discussion<br>
for a while now - basically the Web Profile works fine with HTTP<br>
but won't work from pages served using HTTPS. A possible HTTPS-capable<br>
profile has been prototyped, but it's pretty nasty. There is much<br>
more information on the topic here:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://andromeda.star.bristol.ac.uk/websamp/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://andromeda.star.bristol.ac.uk/websamp/</a><br>
<br>
As an alternative to the HTTPS profile, I'm thinking about more<br>
lightweight workarounds. One is just to provide a simple helper<br>
application that takes a suitable filename on the command line<br>
(VOTable table or FITS image) and sends it to a running SAMP<br>
client. Such an application could be associated in the<br>
browser with suitable MIME types (application/x-votable+xml,<br>
image/fits), or you could just choose it when the browser<br>
asks you what application you want to open a downloaded file with.<br>
<br>
This is much less flexible than allowing the web page (web application)<br>
to interact with the SAMP hub itself, which is what you can do<br>
with SAMP+Web Profile. However, in practice, nearly(?) all Web SAMP<br>
pages that I'm aware of just use Web SAMP to allow the user to<br>
send a samp.load.votable or image.load.fits message, and that's<br>
done nearly as well by the helper application. It works with<br>
rather than against normal browser operations, which makes it<br>
much less painful to implement than the HTTPS profile;<br>
it works equally with HTTPS or HTTP, and no additional <br>
infrastructure is required. The main downside is that the user has <br>
to configure it somehow (install script, tell browser to use it <br>
to handle relevant files).<br>
<br>
I have written such a helper application, and I'd be interested<br>
to know if anyone wants to try it out: especially data providers<br>
who are using HTTPS and want to allow users to load tables/images<br>
using SAMP. Would this be an acceptable solution?<br>
<br>
You can find the application here:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk/websamp/sampload.jar" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk/websamp/sampload.jar</a><br>
<br>
If you run, e.g. "java -jar sampload.jar /tmp/tmpfile.vot"<br>
then it will pop up a window asking which VOTable-capable<br>
SAMP client you want to send tmpfile.vot to.<br>
(It works out what kind of file it is by looking at the content).<br>
<br>
Unless your OS/browser can execute jar files directly, to use it with<br>
a browser you'll need to accompany it with a small shell script or <br>
equivalent like<br>
<br>
#!/bin/sh<br>
java -jar /path/to/sampload.jar "$@"<br>
<br>
Any feedback, comments, ideas welcome.<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
--<br>
Mark Taylor Astronomical Programmer Physics, Bristol University, UK<br>
<a href="mailto:m.b.taylor@bris.ac.uk" target="_blank">m.b.taylor@bris.ac.uk</a> +44-117-9288776 <a href="http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/</a><br>
</blockquote></div>