Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] TODO's in http_integration

[Divye K. <div...@gm...>]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Dean Michael Berris <mik...@gm...
> wrote:

>
> About multi-part message posting, I have not seen any documentation
> regarding the semantics for a multi-part POST message. If it has
> something to do with MIME, then that library has yet to be written
> external to the HTTP implementation. AFAICT, each HTTP POST Message
> has a single body, and a single Content-Length and Content-Type
> headers -- If the actual body is a multi-part message, then I think
> the body should have to be formed accordingly, and the Content-Type
> correctly as well to something like 'multi-part/mixed;
> boundary="some_boundary"'. The HTTP Client will then be sufficient in
> its current form to be able to do:
>

The documentation for sending multiple files/form-fields/data via POST
(multipart data) is in RFC 2388 (copy at
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2388.html ). A quick example of how the body is
structured for a multipart POST request is located at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/multipart_request_C_.aspx

I think supporting this feature should be our responsibility. The user
should not need to deal with the intricacies of structuring the data
according to the rules of a multipart form. It will be a source of errors in
the client application. The user should simply provide a content type and
corresponding stream and we should draft a proper request out of it.



> Another thing that may be required is to change the multi-map
> underlying implementation for HTTP to use a list of std::pair<>'s to
> preserve ordering. I've read something about the order of occurrence
> and possible merging of repeating HTTP Headers.
>

Some information about merging headers is located at
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_headers.html

With multi-line headers processing, I'm not sure if this is ever going
to be a problem with HTTP -- I'm not sure of the HTTP spec requires
that headers be a single line -- but I am a little worried about our
lack of HTTP headers checking. Does anybody have experience with
special headers that may span multiple lines? Or am I imagining things
here? :D

See section 4.2 - Message Headers of RFC 2616 (
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2388.html ).
Headers can span multiple lines. This would require a change in the
processing of the headers.



> One last thing which needs some scrutiny: maybe we should define a
> User-Agent: header to identify cpp-netlib? :D
>

Maybe a default User-Agent header can be provided. Any other ideas?

Divye

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