[racket-dev] net/http-client

Based on a request back in early July to remove the restrictions that
net/url puts on HTTP communication (vis a vis URL encoding), I have
just pushed a new HTTP client as net/http-client.

The push also changes net/url to use net/http-client so that we just
have 1 HTTP request producer, rather than 3.

It passes all of the net/* tests, but these don't use features like
proxying, HTTP/1.1, etc. I'm slightly nervous that it doesn't do those
correct, but not super nervous, because I just cut-and-pasted the
code.

The main approach of the library is best explained by this contract:

[http-sendrecv
   (->* ((or/c bytes? string?) (or/c bytes? string?))
        (#:ssl? (or/c boolean? ssl-client-context? symbol?)
                #:port (between/c 1 65535)
                #:method (or/c bytes? string? symbol?)
                #:headers (listof (or/c bytes? string?))
                #:data (or/c false/c bytes? string?))
        (values bytes? (listof bytes?) input-port?))]

Compared to net/url,
- It supports bytes and strings everywhere
- It supports data on every method and not just POST
- It always returns the status line, headers, and content (as a port)

I feel that the only thing it could do better is support two more
options for #:data:
- A input-port? to read from and copy to the HTTP connection
- A (-> output-port? void) function to call with the HTTP connection's
output port to stream the data

But I'd like a second opinion before adding them.

Jay

-- 
Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay

"The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93