The Barter Server


The Barter Server, once compiled and installed, can be invoked with the barterd.start command, installed by default in /usr/local/barter/bin. It can be shutdown with barterd.stop. These two programs are simply shell scripts and invoke barterd with certain default parameters, so you may wish to edit them.

When the Barter Server is running, you can telnet to it. By default it is configured to run on port 1134. You will notice that every message it sends back to you is in the following format:

[3-digit code] [human-readable description of code's meaning]
[data, can be multiple lines or empty]
.

The 3-digit code determines the meaning and context of the message. You can see the symbolic names for these codes defined in the include file bif.h.

Commands that are sent to the server are simply command names with space-delimeted argument lists. Here are a few examples you can try:

denom_create foobar
denom_read foobar
user_create nothing
user_read nothing
balance
event_send nothing Hello+Mr.+Nothing

However, you will probably find it more convenient to interact with the Barter Server via the Perl client API. The module to use is bif::client. It contains methods for all of the Barter Server commands as well as some wrappers to simplify compound operations (like authentication).