client-side [was: Re: [Web-SIG] Random thoughts]

[John J Lee]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Greg Stein wrote:

> 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 :-)

He was talking about the server side!


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

That's already down at the httplib level (and the socket level, of
course).


>   * Basic/Digest/??? authentication

That's naturally done at the urllib / urllib2 level, given the way it
works.


>   * WebDAV

I plead ignorance.


>   * Proxy
>   * Proxy auth

Somebody has submitted a patch (515003) to shift this to a lower level
than urllib2.  I have no opinion as yet.


> The current model for the client side uses two, distinct classes to deal
> with the SSL feature.

Sorry, which classes are they?


> I have an entirely separate module for the WebDAV
> stuff.

How should it be integrated (if at all), in your opinion (assuming you
want it in the standard library)?


> And authentication isn't even handled in the core http classes, but
> over in urllib(2). Same for proxy support.

See above.


> PEP 267 is about a refactoring to bring these features under one cover,

Er, "Optimized Access to Module Namespaces"?  Which PEP *did* you mean?
I haven't seen it.


John