[Arkadietz]

Guys could you tell me which of these is the best and most supported. Also i can't find any tutorial how to install it.

[Skippy]

I've only used Socket and SteamTools and I prefer SteamTools over socket. It's easier to understand and use.

[HSFighter]

We use Socket and Curl in our Plugins. (Selectable)

It's the best option for an admin.
Not need to install anything new.

Can't talk about SteamTools.
I have no experience to code with this extension.

[11530]

SteamTools is the preferred extension amongst the majority of us.

[Impact123]

There really isn't a best one, they are not the same and meant to be used for doing different things.
Socket is rather hard to use and requires a lot code, still i prefer it for these reasons

• It's supported for all games
• It's stable
• It's flexible
• It's fast
• Lot's of plugins require it -> probably already installed

Curl seems to crash on some servers for unknown reasons, which is why i don't use it anymore.
Stamtools wasn't/isn't? well supported for css when i tried it, simple http requests were slow and the extension occasionally crashed on me.

[Powerlord]

Originally Posted by Impact123 There really isn't a best one, they are not the same and meant to be used for doing different things. Socket is rather hard to use and requires a lot code, still i prefer it for these reasons It's supported for all games It's stable It's flexible It's fast Lot's of plugins require it -> probably already installed Curl seems to crash on some servers for unknown reasons, which is why i don't use it anymore. Stamtools wasn't/isn't? well supported for css when i tried it, simple http requests were slow and the extension occasionally crashed on me.

Sadly, SteamTools is only "officially" supported on Team Fortress 2.

I only use it in my plugins because SDKHooks no longer supports game name changing on Source 2009 (or more accurately, SDK2013) games like CS:S and TF2.

SourceMod has an internal extenson called Webternet (the gamedata updater) that is located in extensons/curl in the source code. However, it doesn't have a public API and the public cURL extension isn't based on it. However, it doesn't have a plugin interface...

[VoiDeD]

SteamTools will drop the performance of your server hilariously if you start making requests as often as every 15 seconds. Any pending requests will queue up into infinity and likely tank your server completely after a few minutes. I was recently burnt by this when I replaced some code that previously used the socket ext with SteamTools.

Unfortunately the failure point is not clear here. SteamTools has some terribly inefficient code w/r/t HTTP requests, but the majority of the machinery is implemented in the steamclient library.

If you're not making that many requests, though, it's probably fine.

[cool_myll]

Originally Posted by Impact123 There really isn't a best one, they are not the same and meant to be used for doing different things. Socket is rather hard to use and requires a lot code, still i prefer it for these reasons It's supported for all games It's stable It's flexible It's fast Lot's of plugins require it -> probably already installed Curl seems to crash on some servers for unknown reasons, which is why i don't use it anymore. Stamtools wasn't/isn't? well supported for css when i tried it, simple http requests were slow and the extension occasionally crashed on me.

Socket + FragRadio crashes the server on every restart. I have reported to both socket and fragradio threads but havent found any solutions.

[Root_]

I prefer cURL because its supposed to do many things with send/receive/whatever over 'outside'. Never had any issues with it.
Socket hang my server sometimes (i really dont know why, probably after plugin reloading during request) but yeah, its used in many plugins and seems to be stable if you use it properly.
SteamTools is supported for Source 2009 games, so i dont use this.

[friagram]

Honestly, the only thing I use steamtools for is changing gamename, socket for everything else.
Would be nice if a standalone extension or sourcemod native for doing this were added.