Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Pion's HTTPParser

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

Hi Mike!

On Dec 11, 2007 10:40 AM, Michael Dickey <mi...@mi...> wrote:
> 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 agree, though I'd also like to have other people in the Boost
mailing list involved somehow. I like the input that we get there, and
I'm thankful that the discussion has brought out interesting insights
from people in the list. :)

> 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 =)
>

I'll go ahead and schedule this for later -- we should really be using
the Sourceforge tracker for these "TODO's" .

> 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.
>

Sweet! That sounds like good motivation for me to actually write more
documentation, try porting your better parser, and see how else we can
improve on decoupling the logging/networking/etc. from the actual
parsing.

Just a question: why shouldn't we be using Boost.Spirit for this sort of thing?

-- 
Dean Michael C. Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.
[http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com/]
[mik...@gm...]
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