HTTP Client 2, Implementation

[ChristianGruen]

Based on Adam’s suggestion, #99 (comment):

With a common had implementation core in Java would be beneficial for all implementors of the spec.

[ChristianGruen]

An update on the BaseX perspective:

We could provide a basic implementation of the spec in our core, but use the shared implementation if it is found in the classpath. This way, users could get access to current HTTP features (and, later, HTTP/2), which are not provided by the Java default implementation.

We’ll be happy to contribute code and bug fixes to the shared implementation!

[adamretter]

Awesome :-)

[ChristianGruen]

I’m back online!

One side note regarding the HTTP Client implementation: Java 9 has improved support for HTTP Client requests. New standard libraries for both HTTP/2 and WebSockets have been added (see e.g. Introduction to the JDK HTTP Client).

BaseX is still based on Java 8, but due to the accelerated release cycle, we’ll probably switch to Java 11 in 2019 (and skip version 9 and 10). I don’t know what are the plans for eXist-db?

[adamretter]

@ChristianGruen Welcome back!

I am also back (but on actual Holiday - but working).

So AFAIK the main thing for me to do is look at the Response processing stuff now...

Regards Java, eXist-db is CI tested on Java 8, 9, 10, and 11. So we can run on those platforms just fine, at the moment, our language level for development is Java 8. I feel like there are still a lot of JDK 8 installations out there, although I note that Ubuntu's default has been OpenJDK 9 for a while now. We will likely move to Java 9 language level (or so) in the next 6 - 12 months, but no immediate plans right now.

[ChristianGruen]

Thanks! I hope your holiday hasn’t turned into completely the wrong direction…

[adamretter]

So just a note to myself that when I implement, I will likely use the Apache HTTP Client. When doing so, I need to use the Asynchronous Client to workaround problems with the Synchronous Client and Jetty, see:

• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/2b70b2c6a1f565d2c35cbf53d520d51337da2caeccd917dda366531d@%3Chttpclient-users.hc.apache.org%3E
• REST interface put method failing eXist-db/exist#2186