[cpp-netlib-devel] Incremental Parser Development

[Dean M. B. <mik...@gm...>]

Hi Guys,

Just a quick heads up, I've pushed an incremental parser for HTTP
responses that I'm building with two birds to hit:

1. Develop a spec-compliant HTTP response message parser that is
stateful, space-efficient, and is restartable that will be used in the
asynchronous http client implementation.

2. Develop an incremental parser concept which might stand as a good
abstraction on its own.

#1 is the short term goal, while #2 is the longer term goal. The
reason for #2 is similar to the reasoning behind the development of
the Message concept as well as the Request and Response concepts: so
that it would be easier for us and others to implement compliant,
drop-in implementations that model the Message, Request, and Response
concepts. The goal for having a suitable incremental parser interface
is so that we can generally abstract the client/server implementations
enough to just rely on concepts like an IncrementalParser which can be
implemented underneath using as many different technologies as
possible.

I think if we have an implementation of incremental parsers for HTTP,
XMPP, SMTP, then that might make a compelling component of the library
that would be useful in different kinds of applications -- much like
how the URI parser is really useful in many different contexts outside
of just cpp-netlib.

Thanks guys and I hope this helps.

PS. In case you want to pick up where I've left things hanging, please
feel free to fork and send in pull requests. I've tried to document
the rationale in the test, and will be documenting the rationale for
the implementation more as I we go along. The test is in
libs/network/test/http_incremental_parser.cpp (in commit
http://bit.ly/dmkA9f, the actual file is http://bit.ly/9h61ju). The
implementation now is able to at least parse the HTTP version part of
a range, and say whether it was successful or whether there are still
missing parts, or that the range isn't conforming.

-- 
Dean Michael Berris
deanberris.com