Re: WiSH: A General Purpose Message Framing over Byte-Stream Oriented Wire Protocols (HTTP)

Thanks for the feedback.

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Loïc Hoguin <essen@ninenines.eu> wrote:

> On 10/21/2016 03:04 PM, Takeshi Yoshino wrote:
>
>> <snip>
>> Good point. I was thinking about using the media type suffix convention
>> like +json, +xml, etc. (RFC 6839, RFC 7303) when we need to represent
>> the type of the messages. As the WebSocket subprotocol is required to
>> conform to the token ABNF, they can be embedded into the subtype part.
>>
>
> The problem with "+json" and "+xml" is that they do not represent the type
> of the messages, just their encoding.
>
> This is why we have media types like "application/problem+json" instead of
> using "application/json" for everything, where "application/problem"
> indicates what the representation contains, and "+json" indicates its
> encoding.
>
> Going back to WiSH, having application/webstream+json would only give
> information about the encoding of the response and frames bodies, not what
> they actually contain or how an endpoint should process the frames. We
> would still need more info to process it.
>
Agreed. It's also unclear how to apply a single suffix to text/binary
frames.


>
> Regarding negotiation, my impression to the subprotocol mechanism of RFC
>> 6455 has been that it's not really necessary thing. The server and JS
>> (or native application) may negotiate application level sub-protocol
>> using e.g. URL (some parameters in the query part or even the path part
>> can encode such info) and the initial message sent following the
>> handshake response immediately without any latency loss (this topic was
>> discussed at the HyBi WG sometimes e.g.
>> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hybi/current/msg10347.html
>> <https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/hybi/current/msg10347.html>).
>>
>
> The good thing is that it's standard. There's only one way to select a
> sub-protocol, and you are guaranteed failure (or a normal HTTP response) if
> the endpoint doesn't speak the sub-protocol you want.
>
> The use of a media type is precious to me as it makes it possible to write
> an autonomous client. Making the sub-protocol as part of the media type
> simplifies things greatly.
>
> There are potential issues though and a number of things need to be
> defined:
>
> * The method used to perform the request is important. A client will not
> be able to speak to the server if the method is GET. Similarly, no
> communication can occur if the method is HEAD. I would advise defining
> behavior for both GET and POST methods.
>
> * The GET method would be used to enable a server->client stream, similar
> to text/event-stream, except with binary frames supported. The difference
> being the lack of event IDs and Last-Event-ID header. In some cases it
> doesn't matter.
>
> * The POST method would be used to enable a bidirectional stream. But this
> implies that the client uses Content-Type: application/webstream in the
> request, along with the Accept header. Otherwise the server has no way to
> know what the request body will contain. Let content negotiation deal with
> both headers, it's already well defined.
>
> * Technically this would allow client->server and server->client streams
> to select and use a different sub-protocol. I'm not sure it's worth
> preventing this in the spec; instead let the servers decide if they want to
> allow this. But we probably need to mention it.
>
It's also possible to have a non-web-stream request with a web-stream
response (POST).


>
> * By the way, don't know if consistency is desirable, by maybe calling it
> application/web-stream is better. Maybe not.
>
Sounds good.


>
> * The HEAD method behaves as usual. The PUT method is probably not
> compatible with doing this. PATCH and DELETE are not compatible AFAIK.
>
Not sure why a PUT/PATCH request can't have a streamed body.  I don't think
we want to over-spec how to use HTTP with this media type (which is not the
only stream-able media type either)




>
> <snip>
>> Oh, interesting. Does this mean that on the browser a JSON codec that
>> takes / produces ArrayBuffers is used?
>>
>
> I have no idea about browsers, sorry. :-) Not dealing with them often. But
> as far as I understand it involves using a different type to get binaries,
> yes. I have no idea how this is done.
>
>     Which brings me to my question: do you think it could be worth
>>     adding a note to implementers that perhaps they should consider
>>     optionally disabling the UTF-8 check when JSON is expected for text
>>     frames?
>>
>>
>> We could have removed the valid UTF-8 requirement of RFC 6455. This is
>> something need to be enforced at the binding between the Web API and a
>> WebSocket protocol stack, but not at the protocol level.
>>
>> Until
>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00
>> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00>,
>> text frames had to be a valid UTF-8 (strictly speaking, data had to be
>> 0xFF-free), but not from the version 01.
>>
>> We can choose to omit the valid UTF-8 requirement from the WiSH spec and
>> instead have it in the spec for gluing WiSH with the WebSocket API in
>> the future. Then, server implementors won't be explicitly encouraged to
>> check validness when implementing WiSH.
>>
>
> That sounds like a good idea. I think it should still be mentioned in the
> protocol spec (basically explaining what you said and referring to another
> document) so that implementors are aware of the UTF-8 check and decide
> whether to implement it. If it was only written in a browser RFC I would
> most likely never have seen it, personally.
>
>
> --
> Loïc Hoguin
> https://ninenines.eu
>
>