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

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

Hi Mike!

Sorry this took a while, been swamped with work lately.

On Dec 12, 2007 2:02 AM, Michael Dickey <mi...@mi...> wrote:
> On Dec 11, 2007, at 12:26 AM, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
>
> > 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'm new to the Boost list, so I just wasn't sure about overwhelming it
> messages on this topic -- in particular as we get more into
> implementation details.  I can re-post my message there though if you
> think others would be interested in chiming in.
>

Now that I think about it, it would really make sense once we get the
HTTP parsing and somehow implement it and make it work with the
basic_message<> type. This should open up the discussion to more
possibilities. It's really just a lot of work, and I currently do not
have the time to get to it yet.

> ...
> >> 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.
>
> Great, feel free to use as much or little of it as you like!  =)
>
> And of course, let me know if you have any questions..
>

Thanks! Will do. :)

> > Just a question: why shouldn't we be using Boost.Spirit for this
> > sort of thing?
>
> The main reason I didn't use it is that I'm not familiar with
> Boost.Spirit, and the parsing code was original based on Chris'
> http_server examples in ASIO (which do not use Spirit).
>
> I got the impression from reading through the Spirit pages that it
> does incur a performance penalty, and I wanted to make everything in
> Pion as fast as possible.  Also, I wasn't clear if Spirit could handle
> the incremental processing needs.  Namely, the parser needs to be able
> to consume as few as 1 byte at a time to make it asynchronous, low-
> memory and HTTP/1.1 compatible.
>

Now that you mention it, I think using Spirit in this context
(incremental parsing, DFA style) might not make much sense. I'll try
reading up on Boost.Statechart which might be a better fit (maybe
better than a hand-rolled switch() which becomes unwieldy most times)
or perhaps Expressive for some pattern matching/parsing.

Though from the looks of it, we have a lot of stuff we can work with
already. Now it's just a matter of getting to it. ;-)

Again, thanks Mike and have a great day!

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