[Web-SIG] Random thoughts

[Greg Stein]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 09:51:17PM -0500, Greg Ward wrote:
> I'm just catching up on the archive for this list.  Some random
> thoughts:
> 
>   * a new package, 'web', is definitely in order.
>     "from web import cookies", "from web import http" just sounds right.
>     (That contradicts Greg Stein's proposal in PEP 267, but I assume
>     he's not strongly wedded to that.)

Correct. The name isn't the important part of the PEP. That said, "web" is
a big misnomer for [package containing] an http client library, but that's
a bikeshed of an entirely different color :-)

I'm more interested in a way of constructing a connection to a server,
where that connection has some various combination of features:

  * SSL
  * Basic/Digest/??? authentication
  * WebDAV
  * Proxy
  * Proxy auth

The current model for the client side uses two, distinct classes to deal
with the SSL feature. I have an entirely separate module for the WebDAV
stuff. And authentication isn't even handled in the core http classes, but
over in urllib(2). Same for proxy support.

PEP 267 is about a refactoring to bring these features under one cover,
and to move some features from urllib down into the basic connection
classes to be used by any http client. (and yah, urllib would still expose
some concepts since ftp still needs some authn, but it could just defer to
the "new" httplib authn facilities)

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/