[whatwg] Server-Sent Events parsing issue

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:23:41 +0200, ATSUSHI TAKAYAMA  
<taka.atsushi at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Anne van Kesteren <annevk at opera.com>  
> wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 06:41:59 +0200, ATSUSHI TAKAYAMA
>> <taka.atsushi at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> It's a minor error in the spec in the Server-Sent Events spec.
>>> http://dev.w3.org/html5/eventsource/#event-stream-interpretation
>>>
>>> When processing a line with only "data:", the data buffer will be the
>>> empty string and the LF character added at the "process the field"
>>> stage. When dispatching the event, the first step "If the data buffer
>>> is an empty string, set the data buffer and the event name buffer to
>>> the empty string and abort these steps." does not apply here (since we
>>> have the LF character, which will be removed in the step 2). So it
>>> does fire a MessageEvent with an empty string as the data property.
>>>
>>> I think the steps 1 and 2 of the dispatching should be the other way
>>> round.
>>
>> Why would we not want to dispatch an event where data is the empty  
>> string in this case? I do not think this is an error. (Although  
>> admittedly I once
>> thought it was.)
>
> Well, in that case the example should be re-written:
>
> = http://dev.w3.org/html5/eventsource/#event-stream-interpretation
>
> The following stream fires just one event:
> data
>
> data
> data
>
> data:
>
> The first and last blocks do nothing, since they do not contain any
> actual data (the data buffer remains at the empty string, and so
> nothing gets dispatched). The middle block fires an event with the
> data set to a single newline character.

Maybe you are right and the specification is wrong (and the example is  
correct).

http://tc.labs.opera.com/apis/EventSource/format-field-data.htm (this is  
written against the example; passes in Opera, fails in WebKit)

I don't really mind which way we go here I think.


> = up to here
>
> It's slightly out of topic, but what's the idea behind making a line
> without a semicolon make the whole line the "field"? The 3 out of 4
> possible "field" names, "event", "id" and "retry" make no sense
> without the value. Also "data" line without any message seems useless
> to me, and even if you do want it without a message "data:" does the
> job.

Maybe this should be tightened up indeed. I can update the test suite  
either way.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/