Re: FastCGI protocol and http headers

Jason P Sage wrote:

Hello Jason

Thank you for your answer ! You were very kind.

[Jason
Peter Sage] I have found in my REGULAR CGI
programming that I have much more flexibility and control making my own
headers
and using what is known as NON-PARSED HEADER CGI. This is done by
simply naming
your CGI application something like nph-myprogram
versus myprogram.

Additionally,
this MIGHT already work in FAST CGI as well.
This MIGHT in theory, tell the WEBSERVER (if it thinks fastcgi is in
fact cgi) to
NOT parse the headers at all just from the filename.

There's simply no trick with FastCGI : put your desired headers on the
response. Http server will mix it with its own headers.

I
do not KNOW the answer – but – I DO know I
like working with nph- (non parsed header) CGI – as it gives me
complete
control of what gets sent OUT, and as for what comes in, well.. the web
server
is expected (in CGI any way as far as I know) is given the job of
taking the
incoming header and data and creating that wonderful CGI environment
for us…
and it sets up that temporary stream for reading in posts as well in
the case
of a post versus get form method.

Note
also – I only have experience with http url form
encoded applications (or whatever its called) HTML, HTML FORMS, and
spitting
out HTML back to the client J

You may want to have a look at something called http file upload. It's
a FORM with POST method and special encoding type :
MULTIPART/FORM-DATA.

Using it your script or CGI may receive a file (or any # of files) as
if they were form fields. Very nice.

However, you'll have some work to parse stdin cause it comes in as a
MULTIPART MIME MESSAGE. In your case (CGI) I guess you'll have plenty
of tools to parse it.

However, in my case, with my own FastCGI server, I'm having to do it on
my own :-(

This is where I'm stucked right now.

[Jason
Peter Sage] You might find the same here is true for
FAST CGI. It may possibly grab the incoming headers and make the data
available
via its API, and then going out – well – back to what I wrote
above.

With FastCGI all the data that comes in to a CGI also comes in via
TCP/IP records. This is no problem. The headers that the client
submited are coming in OK. No problem here.

·
The application wants a special
content-type
setting

[Jason
Peter Sage] I only support ONE so far.. that long
name.. something like xxx-decode-http/form embedded/application
http or SOMETHING long and cryptic that means – HTML support,
with forms both POST and GET. NOW I DO NOT know how to hand fancy CGI
invoked file transfers yet, which I wish I did – then I could dispatch
Pictures, ZIP files etc or at LEAST accept the uploads of files. That I
can’t
do yet.

Suppose you have a folder of pictures of all of your students and
teachers (you're an University like us). Your script then decides to
send a picture, which is a jpg image file, to the browser.

Then your script (CGI) add this header : Content-Type: image/jpeg
(instead of the usual Content-Type: text/html) and, reads that file
echoing it back as the response of the CGI. IOW, instead of the HTML,
you put the image file raw binary data.

I have seen that some http servers have something special for this
occasion : they have a special http header called X-SENDFILE.

Then your script may simply add this header, without having to re-read
the image file again.

This I have seen on Apache, Lighthttpd and Abyss.

·
The application needs to stuff a
customized Pragma
http header

[Jason
Peter Sage] This I wish I knew what you were talking
about… I don’t even know what pragma means… yup I admit it! J
Sounds scary though.

A pragma header, AFAIK, is simply a customized header. I use it to add
a header of my own telling how much time the transaction took within
the CGI (or script) process.

Then, on the client side, I can calculate the total elapsed time, the
time within the script I have from the headers and finally, the
"environmental time" which would be all of the other times (switch /
cable etc etc).

Thanks
in advance 4 your support
!

[Jason
Peter Sage] I wish I had more information to offer - …
well I kind of do – the header formats and some code snips. Just ask!

Thank you !

BTW
– You know who I am and I KNOW you have done a
wonderful job so far and have made a lot of progress in a short amount
of
time!!!! GREAT JOB!

Thank you again !

Jason

--

Obrigado,

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Jose Adriano Baltieri - Analista de Sistemas

DTI - CENTRO - UNIMEP - Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba

PIRACICABA - SP - Brasil - Fone : (19) 3124-1858

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--
Obrigado,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jose Adriano Baltieri - Analista de Sistemas
DTI - CENTRO - UNIMEP - Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba
PIRACICABA - SP - Brasil - Fone : (19) 3124-1858
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