Comments on the web modules

[Josep Portella Florit <jpf@primfilat.com>]

Hi!

I have some comments on the web modules:

1) The web server handlers receive a request object and the body as a
bytevector.  I think it would be more flexible to pass the request
object only, and let the handler decide how to read the body from the
port of the request object; it would allow processing large bodies
without being bound by RAM.

2) The web server handlers must return a response object (or an alist of
headers) and a body, which may be a bytevector, a string or a procedure
that accepts a port argument.  In the case of the procedure, the output
to the port is accumulated into a bytevector, and then written to the
client's port.  I think it should be written to the client's port
directly; it would allow to write large bodies without being bound by
RAM.  This would imply that, if the content-length is not set, the port
should be wrapped by a chunk-encoded port (I know you have already
thought about this, according to the `sanitize-response' documentation),
or else the connection should be closed after the procedure returns.

3) The web server should add the client's sock-addr to the meta alist
of the request object.  I know you planned to do this, according to
the `request-meta' documentation and the (web server http) source.
Instead of taking the `cdr' of `accept's return value and storing it
somewhere, which would complicate the code, you could use
`getpeername' when building the request.  I'm interested in this
because I wrote a procedure that creates request objects from CGI
requests, and I would like to make the meta information compatible.

4) `sanitize-response' adds a default charset parameter to the
response's content-type header when the body is a string or a
procedure, even if the content-type is not textual.  See the code
below.  I think it should only do this for textual content-types
(text/*).

Regards


### `sanitize-response' test

(use-modules (web server)
             (web request)
             (web response)
             (web uri)
             (rnrs io ports))

(define (sanitize-response-test body)
  (call-with-values (lambda ()
                      (sanitize-response
                       (build-request (string->uri "http://test/"))
                       '((content-type . (application/octet-stream)))
                       body))
    (lambda (response body)
      (values (response-headers response)
              body))))


(sanitize-response-test (lambda (port)
                          (put-bytevector port #vu8(1 2 3))))
=> ((content-length . 3)
    (content-type application/octet-stream (charset . "utf-8")))
=> #vu8(1 2 3)


(sanitize-response-test "\x01\x02\x03")
=> ((content-length . 3)
    (content-type application/octet-stream (charset . "utf-8")))
=> #vu8(1 2 3)


(sanitize-response-test #vu8(1 2 3))
=> ((content-length . 3)
    (content-type application/octet-stream))
=> #vu8(1 2 3)