Re: [boost] New Lib "Beast", HTTP + WebSocket protocols

Subject: Re: [boost] New Lib "Beast", HTTP + WebSocket protocols
From: Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira (vini.ipsmaker_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-04-24 15:33:02

2016-04-24 10:14 GMT-03:00 Vinnie Falco <vinnie.falco_at_[hidden]>:

> I'm open to collaboration but also cautious.
>

That's good to know.

>From the rest of your reply, I assume Boost.Http isn't ready to be
integrated right now.

I wish you could put more details in the documentation, so I can understand
Beast better without delving into the code.

Maybe I'll bug you more later once Boost.Http advances a little more. And,
like Bjorn already stated, nice library.

There's a strong need for simple free functions
> to send and receive HTTP messages on a socket in as few lines of code
> as possible. Beast.HTTP achieves this. Example code:
>
>     using namespace beast::http;
>     boost::asio::ip::tcp::socket sock(ios);
>     ...
>     request<empty_body> req({method_t::http_get, "/", 11});
>     req.headers.replace("Host", "boost.org:80");
>     req.headers.replace("User-Agent", "Beast.HTTP");
>     write(sock, req);
>

You explained your point quite well.

Could you please write an example of how do you imagine the ideal
server-side API?

"Boost.Http currently only provides a server-side API, but the
> reviewers felt that a client-side API would be usable to more users."
>
> Beast.HTTP is completely role-agnostic, and works for building clients
> and servers.
>

We hope to develop the client-side API after the parser project is
finished. The same abstractions should be used too. However, it may be
useful to add client-side only useful functions where we can have
specialized get or post methods.

Bjorn is wrapping libcurl into a Boost-like interface to gain knowledge:
https://github.com/breese/trial.http.curl

 "There was also a recurring request for Boost.Http to be a header-only
>  library. The HTTP parser currently used is not header-only and that
> is  the main obstacle towards a header-only Boost.Http library."
>
> Agree 100%. Beast.HTTP also uses the NodeJS parser, and that's the
> only bit of code that is not header only. Thursday I started on a
> header-only parser, here's what we have so far (please keep in mind,
> this is a work in progress):
>
> https://github.com/vinniefalco/rippled/blob/my-parser/src/beast/test/http/my_parser.cpp
>

I wasn't aware of this effort before.

I took a look now that you mentioned. From what I've seen, I assume that
this parser has a SAX-like interface where you interact through callbacks.

The Boost.Http parser that will be developed within this summer will be a
pull parser. It has a less intrusive design and can be used to build parser
with SAX-like interfaces or DOM-like interfaces. It should be useful enough
to also be used as is (i.e. without wrapping in another interface). It
should also be easy to expose iterators using this parser and allow us to
reuse all STL algorithms.

You can take a look at this parser's proposal at
https://gist.github.com/vinipsmaker/4998ccfacb971a0dc1bd .

You can see an example of a pull parser at
https://github.com/google/pulldown-cmark .

-- 
Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira
https://vinipsmaker.github.io/