[cpp-netlib-devel] Pion's HTTPParser

[Michael D. <mi...@mi...>]

Dean and I have been talking on the boost development list about ways  
to integrate Pion code into the current cpp-netlib structure.  Seemed  
like a good idea to move that discussion over to this list instead.

I think that the best starting point would be to focus on merging over  
Pion's HTTPParser class:

http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_parser_8hpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_parser_8cpp-source.html

It's an incremental parser that can be used for both 1.0 and 1.1, and  
also for both requests and responses.  It seems like you could just  
reformat & rename it for boost's style standards, remove the logging  
support, and use cpp-netlib's http::request and http::response classes  
in favor of Pion's HTTPRequest and HTTPResponse (so long as they  
support the same functionality).

FYI: one major thing currently missing in the parser is being able to  
parse HTTP/1.1 chunks.  This is supported in the "Writer" classes (see  
below) but not in our underlying parsing code.  Someone is working on  
this right now actually, and we will probably have it in there by the  
end of the week.

To see an example of how we use it to parse a request or response  
message, check out the HTTPMessage::receive() implementation:

http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_message_8cpp-source.html

Or for an asynchronous usage example, check out the HTTPReader class:

http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_reader_8hpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_reader_8cpp-source.html

Or the HTTPRequestReader and HTTPResponseReader classes:

http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_request_reader_8hpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_response_reader_8hpp-source.html

If you're interested in Pion's asynchronous sending code, just replace  
"Reader" in any of these names with "Writer":

http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_writer_8hpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_writer_8cpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_request_writer_8hpp-source.html
http://pion.atomiclabs.com/files/pion-net/net/doc/html/_h_t_t_p_response_writer_8hpp-source.html

I'd really love to get more involve and work directly on converting  
this code over, but honestly I'm not all that great with templates and  
doing things right for a header-only approach.  Your basic_message  
code definitely looks cooler and more extensible but I'm having a  
little trouble fully grok'ing it.  Plus, I figure you would probably  
do things differently than I =)

In any case, if we could figure out how to merge this functionality  
over I'd be happy to switch over to using cpp-netlib in Pion instead  
of our own message-like classes.

Take care,
-Mike