[erlang-questions] inets HTTP client does not persist connections when POSTing

Ingela Anderton Andin ingela@REDACTED
Tue Aug 19 10:33:48 CEST 2008


Hi,

erlang-questions-request@REDACTED wrote:
> Edwin Fine wrote:
>   
>> I read the inets code, and if I understand it correctly, it seems that 
>> when a non-idempotent operation such as POST is performed, httpc does 
>> not reuse the existing connection (httpc_manager:select_session/4 
>> returns no_connection, which starts a new handler). I am not sure if 
>> this is the correct thing to do, because my understanding is that that
>>     
>> restriction on non-idempotent operations applies to pipelining, 
Yes that is correct, and that is what the test is for. The problem is 
that  persistent
connections that does not use pipeling seems to have  been a missed as a 
concept.
Even though  I wrote most of  the current code in  the http-client  it 
has not been  my
design from scratch.  It has been a gradually improvement  and adoption 
to OTP principals
of a user contribution and one of many things that I do. So it seems 
there is a missing concept
here and that  we (most probably I ;)) need to do something about it. It 
is on the todo-list.

Regards - Ingela Erlang/OTP, Ericsson

>> not 
>> persistent connections. I can see no reason why one should not be able 
>> to do a series of consecutive POSTs on the same socket, as long as one 
>> waits for a reply before posting the next request.
>>     
>
> I don't think this is extremely unreasonable, it's basically a defense 
> mechanism to avoid issues with the non-idempotent request putting the 
> server/connection in an undesirable state. The reasoning generally seems 
> to be that a "fresh" connection to the server is less likely to be 
> terminated prematurely (or arbitrarily). Also remember a server always 
> has the right to close a KA connection (particularly after a 
> non-idempotent request).
>
> One way to improve on this could be to use the "100-continue" header 
> (Expect: 100-continue) before sending a POST body on a Keep-Alive 
> connection. This obviously introduces more latency, which can negate all 
> benefits of Keep-Alive (or even make it worse). On high latency 
> networks, with many of POSTs on a KA connection, it's probably 
> beneficial even with the overhead of "100-continue" (due to 3-way 
> handshake + TCP congestion control on new connections).
>
> Now, I do agree that it seems a little draconian that the library 
> doesn't let the user (developer) make these decisions. I haven't looked 
> at the code at all, but assuming this is what it does,  I'm guessing it 
> was done to make sure people don't fall into this pit of nastiness 
> accidentally. It's a reasonable default for sure, but ought to be 
> possible to override,  by someone well familiar with the dangers (and 
> how to handle them).
>
>   



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