From: "NARUSE, Yui" <naruse@...>
Date: 2011-07-24T03:09:33+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:38426] Re: Proposal to merge net2-http for Ruby 1.9.4

(2011/07/23 8:05), Clifford Heath wrote:
> On 23/07/2011, at 1:56 AM, Tanaka Akira wrote:
>> I guess HTTP POST is not trivial to make an API which is polymorphic to IO.
> 
> In general, that's true.
> 
>> For example, the request data length is required for Content-Length before
>> sending the data.
> 
> You don't have to send Content-Length, but you can't Keep-Alive unless you
> do (unless you chunk each piece of Content as you discover its length, which
> is possible as long as the server is HTTP/1.1 not 1.0).

On request, it can't use closing the connection.
RFC 1945 (HTTP/1.0) says:
---
7.2.2 Length

   When an Entity-Body is included with a message, the length of that
   body may be determined in one of two ways. If a Content-Length header
   field is present, its value in bytes represents the length of the
   Entity-Body. Otherwise, the body length is determined by the closing
   of the connection by the server.

   Closing the connection cannot be used to indicate the end of a
   request body, since it leaves no possibility for the server to send
   back a response. Therefore, HTTP/1.0 requests containing an entity
   body must include a valid Content-Length header field. If a request
   contains an entity body and Content-Length is not specified, and the
   server does not recognize or cannot calculate the length from other
   fields, then the server should send a 400 (bad request) response.
---

> So yes, it's complicated. Sometimes wholesale replacement (and providing a
> fallback option) is a better strategy than stepwise refinement.

We like providing new but easier method to introduce a better strategy.

Anyway, akr's point is not about current implementation.
It is wycats' new idea that "Making HTTP similar to IO".

-- 
NARUSE, Yui  <naruse@airemix.jp>