[whatwg] BWTP for WebSocket transfer protocol

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Aug 7, 2009, at 12:25 AM, Greg Wilkins wrote:

>
> But if your starting point is a working HTTP client or server, then
> the work needed to implement BWTP should not be too significant,
> as the additional complexities (Header fields and mime encoded
> content) are handle almost identically to HTTP.

 From my review of the spec so far, it doesn't look like we'd be able  
to reuse much of our existing HTTP client implementation, at least not  
easily. The general header field parsing may be the same, but that  
code is trivial. The complex parts are the handling of specific  
headers, caching and connection management, and in most http libraries  
that code is not structured in a way that makes it easy to pick and  
choose. My tentative estimation is that the implementation effort for  
BWTP would be considerably higher. That's not to say it's a  
showstopper, it just means there is a tradeoff between additional  
functionality and implementation complexity.

Regards,
Maciej