Connecting ethereum.js and go-ethereum -- MagicToken mismatch?

[tinybike]

(I'm cross-posting this to ethereum.js, since it seems to pertain to both, from my limited vantage point.)

I've been tinkering with the JS API, trying to figure out how to compile contracts (and actually load them into the blockchain). The example here is using Serpent code, but I get the same error when using Solidity instead.

I'm running go-ethereum, started as ethereum -rpc -loglevel=4 -y. If I define a variable w/ some simple serpent code:

var serp = "def double(v):\n" +
"   return(v*2)"

Then from my browser (Chrome) console:

> web3.eth.serpent(serp)
Promise {[[PromiseStatus]]: "pending", [[PromiseValue]]: undefined}

But, it just stays in "pending" forever. On the backend, I get the following message:

2015/01/26 23:48:58 [PEER] MagicToken mismatch. Received [80 79 83 84]

I'm not clear what this means -- what is a MagicToken? I googled and found https://gogs.io/github.com/eris-ltd/go-ethereum/wire, which says:

var MagicToken = []byte{34, 64, 8, 145}

"The magic token which should be the first 4 bytes of every message and can be used as separator between messages." I tried using this in Solidity:

var source = "[]byte{34, 64, 8, 145};" + 
"contract test {\n" +
"   function multiply(uint a) returns(uint d) {\n" +
"       return a * 7;\n" +
"   }\n" +
"}\n";
web3.eth.solidity(source);

but I get the same MagicToken error. What am I doing wrong?

[obscuren]

The current version of go-ethereum's JSON RPC is using TCP/IP and will therefor not work in your browser. We're currently converting the RPC to HTTP and should probably be ready by the end of the week (will update this issue).

It also appears you're using a very old version of ethereum. Please update to develop branch

[tinybike]

Got it. Can a browser talk to go-ethereum via websockets? (Was avoiding websockets since as I understand it they're not yet supported in cpp-ethereum, but...)

[obscuren]

Yes it's supported -ws. Please be aware that web sockets support might drop. We're in the processes of changing to a fully synchronous JavaScript API rather than asynchronous

[tinybike]

Hm, looks like ethereum.js's latest version no longer has providers.WebSocketProvider...strange.

[scottzer0]

yea, so as i understand it, ethereum.js has dropped websocket support in favor of http sync and go-ethereum has yet to implement http?

i'm chomping at the bit to start UI dev on our project...

[obscuren]

@scottzer0 We've HTTP, it's not yet merged and doesn't support all calls.