Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Poll: Next Features to Implement

[Jeroen H. <vex...@gm...>]

On 28 May 2010 12:28, Mark Wright <mar...@in...> wrote:
>> > Mark wrote:
>> > I think it would be really great if cpp-netlib had more support for
>> > XML REST web server and clients, and smtp client, so I vote for:
>> >
>> >  * web framework
>> >   * more message algorithms (transforms, renderers)
>> >   * smtp client
>> >
>> > cpp-netlib REST XML clients and servers that are interopable with
>> > C# WCF REST clients and servers would be really neat.  Then it
>> > would be interesting to run some benchmark tests to see how
>> > C++ netlib XML REST clients and servers perform vs C# clients
>> > and servers.  Some obvious ideas for the XML parsing is to use
>> > Rapid XML:
>> >
>> > http://rapidxml.sourceforge.net/manual.html#namespacerapidxml_1performance
>
>> Glyn wrote:
>> XML parsing is something that's going to crop up over again.  For the XMPP
>> client, I intend to write some simple backends around third party libs such
>> as expat and libxml2 (not rapidxml as it's not an incremental parser).
>>  Rapid XML could still be useful for other parts.  In any case, in the
>> absence of Boost.Xml we'd have to make a lot of decisions about this
>> ourselves so we don't end up writing our own XML library.
>
>> Thank you too for your input.  You've obviously given some thought to this,
>> is it possible that you could contribute?
>
> Hi Glyn, Dean and everyone,
>
> Yes :-)  Obviously I am particulary interested in REST XML stuff.
> For that I was wondering if (just some obvious ideas you have probably
> already thought of):
>
> - the half async part could read in the entire XML message, hopefully
>  just using the HTTP message length to know when it has all of the message
>  (I'm not really sure if that will work or not)
> - then pass it to a thread in a thread pool (the sync half), that then
>  parses the XML with an XML parser.
> - Dean suggested earlier: "URI pattern-based dispatch (ala Rails, or
>  Django/Tornado)" that could call the appropriate handler method (in
>  the same thread that has already parsed the XML).
>
> Rapid XML seems appealing for little benchmarks vs C# WCF.
>
>> Dean wrote:
>> REST-full web services can definitely be already implemented with the
>> HTTP server template. Are you looking for an example on how to do
>> this?
>
> An an example or framework or guidance on how go about writing some
> stuff for this would be neat.
>
>> A framework wouldn't be very hard to implement, but will depend
>> largely on conventions that most web services already need -- URI
>> handling/routing, request parsing, REST method dispatch, etc. I'll
>> look into writing up a simple example and then allowing others to
>> extend into a full framework. I can be involved in that process too
>> and it would be interesting to see where that goes.
>
> That's neat, thanks, I can help.
>
>> As far as XML is concerned, it might be outside the scope of the library.
>> [snip links]
>
>> Thanks very much for the links, I've read pretty much all of these before. :)
>
> I guess I kind of expected you would have :-)
>
>> >
>> > Thanks very much,
>> >
>
>> Thank you very much too, I'll look into implementing the web framework
>> parts in an example first and let others pick up if they find it
>> interesting to work on too. I'll schedule that in the 0.8 release and
>> focus on the HTTP parts for 0.7.
>
>> Have a great day and I hope this helps!
>
> Great, thanks, have a great day.
>
> Thanks, Mark
>

It might be an idea to support boost::property_tree, the XML backend
is based on rapidxml but unfortunately lacking in documentation.

Jeroen