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Re: Libcurl suggestions

From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel-curl_at_haxx.se>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:48:19 +0100 (CET)

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, DOMINICK C MEGLIO wrote:

> >There are perfectly fine URL/URI libraries already, and if there isn't one
> >that suits you I'm sure you can make one pretty swiftly that will.

> Yeah of course. But what I meant by "wasteful" is I would be including
> libwww, which as I'm sure you know, is a rather large and robust library,
> just to have one function. To me, making my users download a 1MB file for a
> 300byte function is wasteful.

I don't think libwww is the only available library that can parse URLs and
return the file name part for you. I fully agree that linking with libww for
the sole purpose of parsing URLs, is a waste.

> curl_checkproto:

> This seems like a good idea to me I guess. However, this kind of seems
> exactly like what you just told me you didn't want to add. I.e. the "why
> stop at just filenames?,"

I agree that this suggestion borders to what I object against, but I see a
clear distinction: checkproto would be focused on returning what protocol
libcurl would USE on the given URL. Not necessarily what the protocol part
says, and it would return not-supported if the specified protocol part isn't.

Thus, it isn't just about parsing the URL and returning the protocol part.

> well, "why stop at just protocols?" Meaning I can already tell if curl
> supports a protocol, curl_easy_perform will return
> CURLE_UNSUPPORTED_PROTOCOL, so that functioning already exists.

Not quite, as then you'd also get the URL transfered if you provided a URL
with a supported protocol.

You could however use the curl_version_info() to extract most of this info,
yes, but then you still wouldn't know for sure what protocol libcurl will use
when specifying a host name like 'curl.haxx.se' or 'ftp.sunet.se'. This
function would tell.

> A function like curl_checkproto however is designed to work directly on a
> URL (at least that's what I assume since you didn't like my method because
> it worked on an easy handle). Therefore, what's the difference between
> parsing a URL to determine the protocol and parsing a URL to determine the
> filename?

The connection between the given URL and how libcurl works. Code to extract
the file name part needs no knowledge whatsoever about libcurl internals.

> Anyway, hopefully this is at least one idea you will like :) I've attached a
> patch that allows the user to specify a path for ares.

Thanks! I've applied, verified and committed it.

-- 
    Daniel Stenberg -- http://curl.haxx.se/ -- http://daniel.haxx.se/
   [[ Do not send mails to this email address. They won't reach me. ]]
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Received on 2003-12-10