Re: [hybi] WebSockets

[Peter Keane <[e-mail]>]

I am not really sure if this fits in with the goals here or not, but
the functionality I am interested in is a method for doing batch
processes, e.g., uploading a directory full of images to a web server.
 I'd like to be able to have the client register a URL with the
server, at which point the server can perform a get at that URL, which
returns a list of items (essentially a directory listing), and GETs
each one.  I have implemented ths with success using the Firefox Plain
Old Webserver (POW)  plugin. I simply configure POW to have a local
directory as Doc root.   It's then easy to do large uploads (really
reverse GET) for many files very quickly (of course I have an HTTP
client like CURL on the actual server to do the GETs).  I could
imagine a standard mechanism to do this sort of thing very handy.

--peter keane

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Ian Hickson <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> The goal of the WebSocket work is to provide two-way communication from a
> Web page in a clean way. The requirements that I collected for this effort
> over the past few years are:
>
>  - The ability for Web pages to send arbitrary text to the server from a
>   script in a Web page, in the form of ordered discrete blocks.
>
>  - The ability for Web servers to send arbitrary text to a Web page that
>   has established a connection, in the form of ordered discrete blocks.
>
>  - Text messages should support all of Unicode.
>
>  - The protocol should support running over ports 80 and 443, ideally
>   with the ability to share the port on the server with an HTTP server.
>
>  - It must be possible to implement a fully-conforming server-side
>   component for this in a few dozen lines of scripting code, in the case
>   where sharing the connection with an HTTP server isn't required.
>
>  - The must be extensible so that it can be extended to support binary
>   data and structured data in both directions in the future, without
>   breaking deployments from the first generation.
>
>  - It must not be possible for the mechanism to be used to successfully
>   connect to existing servers and send them arbitrary commands. In
>   particular, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, POP, and similar protocols must be
>   safe from this.
>
>  - It must be possible to connect to arbitrary remote hosts, but
>   connections to these hosts must only be allowed if the remote host
>   explicitly opts in to allowing that Web page to connect (ideally using
>   the 'origin' convention).
>
> I would be interested in any suggestions people may have along these
> lines. Are there existing protocols that satisfy these requirements? Are
> there requirements I have missed? Are there requirements that people think
> should not be met?
>
> There is a strawman proposal here:
>
>   http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol
>   http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/
>
> Comments welcome.
>
> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
> _______________________________________________
> hybi mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/hybi
>