Re: boost.url review

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2022-08-21 15:13:22

On Sun, Aug 21, 2022 at 7:15 AM Rainer Deyke via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>    - The lack of IRI support is unfortunate.  It's 2022; we should all
> be writing software with Unicode support by default.  However, this can
> be built on top of Boost.URL, and isn't needed in all cases.

We will probably add something to parse an IRI but in all likelihood
it would convert it to UTF-8 as a regular URL. I don't know if I have
the stomach for a total duplication of the existing library except
names like iri_view, iri, static_iri, the duplication of all the
segments and params containers, and the modification of all those
mutating algorithms to support Unicode. I'm not even sure that it is
called for, given that IRIs are for more user-facing purposes. Such
things cannot be submitted in HTTP requests, and as far as I know,
unicode host names would need to be converted to punycode anyway
(which we could do) to submit them to a DNS server.

>    - The "string+offsets" implementation means that a lot of characters
> need to be copied every time something at the left end of a long URL is
> modified.

Yep! Thanks for noticing that :) Was it the right implementation
choice? I sure hope so, but we won't know for sure without field
experience. And I hope we get lots of it, as I am already writing new
libraries whose containers use this same model.

> Yes, but I did find a few errors that should be fixed.  One of the
> examples on https://master.url.cpp.al/url/containers/authority.html does
> not match the text.  I have to admit I skipped over the customization
> section.

Happy to have any issues reported in the repository. The Customization
section is only aimed for the most advanced users, so no loss there.

Thank you for taking the time to review the library.

Regards