Streaming Results from Mochiweb - erlang

I have written a web-service using Erlang and Mochiweb. The web service returns a lot of results and takes some time to finish the computation.
I'd like to return results as soon as the program finds it, instead of returning them when it found them all.
edit:
i found that i can use a chunked request to stream result, but seems that i can't find a way to close the connection. so any idea on how to close a mochiweb request?

To stream data of yet unknown size with HTTP 1.1 you can use HTPP chunked transfer encoding. In this encoding each chunk of data prepended by its size in hexadecimal. Last chunk is a zero-length chunk, with the chunk size coded as 0, but without any data.
If client doesn't support HTTP 1.1 server can send data as binary chunks and close connection at the end of the stream.
In MochiWeb it's all works as following:
HTTP response should be started with Response = Request:respond({Code, ResponseHeaders, chunked}) function. (By the way, look at the code comments);
Then chunks can be send to client with Response:write_chunk(Data) function. To indicate client the end of the stream chunk of zero length should be sent: Response:write_chunk(<<>>).
When handling of current request is over MochiWeb decides should connection be closed or can be reused by HTTP persistent connection.

Related

How can I force close excon connection when using chunked request

I am trying to read the first chunk of each image I am requesting to get its mime type and size which I'm able to do.
However, when I use Connection#reset it doesn't kill the connection and keeps downloading next chunks.
I am just wondering is it possible to close the connection after getting the first chunk?
This is my code right now
streamer = lambda do |chunk, _remaining_bytes, total_bytes|
image_format = MimeMagic.by_magic(chunk)
# other code
#connection.reset
end
Excon.defaults[:chunk_size] = 25
#connection = Excon.new(image_url)
#connection.get(response_block: streamer)
I don't believe there is a way currently to stop before the chunked response concludes. That being said, it might be possible that you could get the data you want from a head request and avoid the need for a get request?

URLRequest fewer characters

I'm trying to fetch some weather data (Location forecast). This request return a couple of kb. OK, so I would only like to request the first part or terminate the request when i get the line
<temperature id="TTT" unit="celsius" value="xxxx"/>
Is it possible to do a URLRequest in iOS Swift that request a certain number of bytes/chars. Or is put into chunks and then terminated when temperature is received. I could setup a server acting as proxy and cut down the data exchanged to my app, but it would be nice if I could avoid this.

Support compression in .NET OData 4 Client

Problem
I have added support for http compression in our self-hosted OWIN/Katana Web API OData 4 service but I do not see how to support compression in the .NET client. I'm using OData libraries v6.5.0 and I need to support compression/decompression in the client (OData v4 Client Code Generator). I am using Deflate encoding for the compression via an ActionFilter. Everything compresses correctly on the server as confirmed via Fiddler but I do not know how to configure the client to support this now that the OData client uses the Request and Response Pipelines instead of the now defunct WritingRequest and RecievingResponse events that once supported this very scenario.
Attempts
By experimentation I found that I can hook into the ReceivingResponse event on my DataServiceContext and then call ReceivingResponseEventArgs.ResponseMessage.GetStream() but I don't know what to do to overwrite the message content correctly. If I CopyTo() on the stream, I get a null reference exception at Microsoft.OData.Core.ODataMessageReader.DetectPayloadKind(). I presume this is because the stream was read to the end and the position needs to be set back to zero but I cannot do that because the stream also throws an exception when setting the position back because it says it does not support seeking. I presume this is simply due to the stream being read-only. Even if I could copy the stream to decompress it successfully, how do I modify the response message content with the decompressed content? I don't see any hooks for this at all in the RequestPipeline or ResponsePipeline. To clarify, I want to decompress the response message content and then set it for the materialization that occurs soon after, how might I do that? Extra credit for how to also send compressed requests to the OData service. Thanks!
OData client use the HTTPWebRequest and HTTPWebReponse, which supports the compression well. Try setting the AutomaticDecompression of HTTPWebRequest to Deflate or GZip, in SendingRequest2 pipeline event, like this:
private void OnSendingRequest_(object sender, SendingRequest2EventArgs args)
{
if (!args.IsBatchPart) // The request message is not HttpWebRequestMessage in batch part.
{
HTTPWebRequest request = ((HttpWebRequestMessage)args.RequestMessage).HttpWebRequest;
request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;
}
}
Then in response, HTTPWebResponse will decompress the stream automatically, before the materialization work.

Twitter stream API - Erlang client

I'm very new in Erlang world and I'm trying to write a client for the Twitter Stream API. I'm using httpc:request to make a POST request and I constantly get 401 error, I'm obviously doing something wrong with how I'm sending the request... What I have looks like this:
fetch_data() ->
Method = post,
URL = "https://stream.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/filter.json",
Headers = "Authorization: OAuth oauth_consumer_key=\"XXX\", oauth_nonce=\"XXX\", oauth_signature=\"XXX%3D\", oauth_signature_method=\"HMAC-SHA1\", oauth_timestamp=\"XXX\", oauth_token=\"XXX-XXXXX\", oauth_version=\"1.0\"",
ContentType = "application/json",
Body = "{\"track\":\"keyword\"}",
HTTPOptions = [],
Options = [],
R = httpc:request(Method, {URL, Headers, ContentType, Body}, HTTPOptions, Options),
R.
At this point I'm confident there's no issue with the signature as the same signature works just fine when trying to access the API with curl. I'm guessing there's some issue with how I'm making the request.
The response I'm getting with the request made the way demonstrated above is:
{ok,{{"HTTP/1.1",401,"Unauthorized"},
[{"cache-control","must-revalidate,no-cache,no-store"},
{"connection","close"},
{"www-authenticate","Basic realm=\"Firehose\""},
{"content-length","1243"},
{"content-type","text/html"}],
"<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\"/>\n<title>Error 401 Unauthorized</title>\n</head>\n<body>\n<h2>HTTP ERROR: 401</h2>\n<p>Problem accessing '/1.1/statuses/filter.json'. Reason:\n<pre> Unauthorized</pre>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n</body>\n</html>\n"}}
When trying with curl I'm using this:
curl --request 'POST' 'https://stream.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/filter.json' --data 'track=keyword' --header 'Authorization: OAuth oauth_consumer_key="XXX", oauth_nonce="XXX", oauth_signature="XXX%3D", oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", oauth_timestamp="XXX", oauth_token="XXX-XXXX", oauth_version="1.0"' --verbose
and I'm getting the events just fine.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, new with Erlang and I've been pulling my hair out on this one for quite a while.
There are several issues with your code:
In Erlang you are encoding parameters as a JSON body while with curl, you are encoding them as form data (application/x-www-form-urlencoded). Twitter API expects the latter. In fact, you get a 401 because the OAuth signature does not match, as you included the track=keyword parameter in the computation while Twitter's server computes it without the JSON body, as it should per OAuth RFC.
You are using httpc with default options. This will not work with the streaming API as the stream never ends. You need to process results as they arrive. For this, you need to pass {sync, false} option to httpc. See also stream and receiver options.
Eventually, while httpc can work initially to access Twitter streaming API, it brings little value to the code you need to develop around it to stream from Twitter API. Depending on your needs you might want to replace it a simple client directly built on ssl, especially considering it can decode HTTP packets (what is left for you is the HTTP chunk encoding).
For example, if your keywords are rare, you might get a timeout from httpc. Besides, it might be easier to update the list of keywords or your code with no downtime without httpc.
A streaming client directly based on ssl could be implemented as a gen_server (or a simple process, if you do not follow OTP principles) or even better a gen_fsm to implement reconnection strategies. You could proceed as follows:
Connect using ssl:connect/3,4 specifying that you want the socket to decode the HTTP packets with {packet, http_bin} and you want the socket to be configured in passive mode {active, false}.
Send the HTTP request packet (preferably as an iolist, with binaries) with ssl:send/2,3. It shall spread on several lines separated with CRLF (\r\n), with first the query line (GET /1.1/statuses/filter.json?... HTTP/1.1) and then the headers including the OAuth headers. Make sure you include Host: stream.twitter.com as well. End with an empty line.
Receive the HTTP response. You can implement this with a loop (since the socket is in passive mode), calling ssl:recv/2,3 until you get http_eoh (end of headers). Note down whether the server will send you data chunked or not by looking at the Transfer-Encoding response header.
Configure the socket in active mode with ssl:setopts/2 and specify you want packets as raw and data in binary format. In fact, if data is chunked, you could continue to use the socket in passive mode. You could also get data line by line or get data as strings. This is a matter of taste: raw is the safest bet, line by line requires that you check the buffer size to prevent truncation of a long JSON-encoded tweet.
Receive data from Twitter as messages sent to your process, either with receive (simple process) or in handle_info handler (if you implemented this with a gen_server). If data is chunked, you shall first receive the chunk size, then the tweets and the end of the chunk eventually (cf RFC 2616). Be prepared to have tweets that spread on several chunks (i.e. maintain some kind of buffer). The best here is to do the minimum decoding in this process and send tweets to another process, possibly in binary format.
You should also handle errors and socket being closed by Twitter. Make sure you follow Twitter's guidelines for reconnection.

Supporting the "Expect: 100-continue" header with ASP.NET MVC

I'm implementing a REST API using ASP.NET MVC, and a little stumbling block has come up in the form of the Expect: 100-continue request header for requests with a post body.
RFC 2616 states that:
Upon receiving a request which
includes an Expect request-header
field with the "100-continue" expectation, an origin server MUST
either respond with 100 (Continue) status and continue to read
from the input stream, or respond with a final status code. The
origin server MUST NOT wait for the request body before sending
the 100 (Continue) response. If it responds with a final status
code, it MAY close the transport connection or it MAY continue
to read and discard the rest of the request. It MUST NOT
perform the requested method if it returns a final status code.
This sounds to me like I need to make two responses to the request, i.e. it needs to immediately send a HTTP 100 Continue response, and then continue reading from the original request stream (i.e. HttpContext.Request.InputStream) without ending the request, and then finally sending the resultant status code (for the sake of argument, lets say it's a 204 No Content result).
So, questions are:
Am I reading the specification right, that I need to make two responses to a request?
How can this be done in ASP.NET MVC?
w.r.t. (2) I have tried using the following code before proceeding to read the input stream...
HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 100;
HttpContext.Response.Flush();
HttpContext.Response.Clear();
...but when I try to set the final 204 status code I get the error:
System.Web.HttpException: Server cannot set status after HTTP headers have been sent.
The .NET framework by default always sends the expect: 100-continue header for every HTTP 1.1 post. This behavior can be programmatically controlled per request via the System.Net.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue property like so:
HttpWebRequest httpReq = GetHttpWebRequestForPost();
httpReq.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false;
It can also be globally controlled programmatically:
System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;
...or globally through configuration:
<system.net>
<settings>
<servicePointManager expect100Continue="false"/>
</settings>
</system.net>
Thank you Lance Olson and Phil Haack for this info.
100-continue should be handled by IIS. Is there a reason why you want to do this explicitly?
IIS handles the 100.
That said, no it's not two responses. In HTTP, when the Expect: 100-continue comes in as part of the message headers, the client should be waiting until it receives the response before sending the content.
Because of the way asp.net is architected, you have little control over the output stream. Any data that gets written to the stream is automatically put in a 200 response with chunked encoding whenever you flush, be it that you're in buffered mode or not.
Sadly all this stuff is hidden away in internal methods all over the place, and the result is that if you rely on asp.net, as does MVC, you're pretty much unable to bypass it.
Wait till you try and access the input stream in a non-buffered way. A whole load of pain.
Seb

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