Re: [Chicken-users] proposed change to http-client

[Graham Fawcett]

On Feb 13, 2008 11:05 AM, Elf <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Here, http:POST overwrite Connection header in req.
> > I guess correct behavior is of http:GET,
> > because with HTTP/1.1 the absence of the Connection header
> > means keep-alive.
> >a
> > Oh, or are you saying that http:POST should ALWAYS close connection?
>
> i was saying that i thought it should always lose connection, but graham
> pointed out that i was incorrect.

In fairness, in HTTP 1.0 you are correct (if overspecific). :-)

> theres a separate issue of 1.0 being default though.

Right. It takes a lot more work to write a correct HTTP 1.1 client;
there are many new issues that are considered "MUSTs" in RFC-speak:
307 redirects, transfer encoding, etc.

The curl egg gives us low-level libcurl bindings; if we want a
complete HTTP 1.1 client implementation, I'd suggest that curl is the
best foundation.

In short, it's a question of what we want the http-client module to be
when it grows up. Implementing a full HTTP 1.1 client is probably not
it. If we assume 1.0 semantics, we should close all connections, or
use Keep-Alive and read the RFCs to make sure we are clear on the
implications. (I confess, I can't remember *why* RFC 2616 suggested
Keep-Alive wasn't a great idea, just that it did.)

Graham