Re: HTTPAPI too fast?

[Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sender: Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


> Hello group, Another problem is this: HTTPAPI fails with only garbage in 
> the error message. I can't debug this to find the command that fails, 
> because in debug mode all runs well. Therefore I think that the cause of 
> this message is that HTTPAPI somewhere doesn't wait for an answer long 
> enough and jumps to conclusions..... Another question: why does 
> CommSSL_Read time out? I am using 1.2. Version 1.1 had the same problem.

According to the HTTP spec, a web server is supposed to send a "100 
Continue" response when a POST request is issued.  However, the spec says 
that, for the sake of older web servers, a program that's issuing a POST 
request has to be prepared to "time-out" if it doesn't receive the "100" 
response, and continue anyway.

(Frankly, this was a bad idea by the people who created the spec. If the 
100 isn't required, then it serves absolutely no purpose and shouldn't 
have been added in the first place!)

But, unfortunately, it was.   Now, some servers send a "100 Continue" 
response, and some do not.  In order to work with both types of servers, 
HTTPAPI will only wait for 1/2 second before giving up.

Why such a short amount of time?  Because for servers that don't send this 
response, HTTPAPI has to wait for it to timeout.  This slows down people's 
POST requests, which is undesirable.

On the other hand, that short amount of time also means that if the 
connection is running slowly, you might receive a "100 Continue" *AFTER* 
the timeout has already happened (which is what I think is happening to 
you, Wilbert)

In version 1.11 of HTTPAPI, I added a new API that can help solve these 
problems, called http_set_100_timeout().  You can call this API to 
increase or decrease the timeout for the "100 Continue" responses, so if 
you know that your server DOES issue them, you can wait a little longer. 
If you know that it doesn't, there's no reason to wait at all.

To use it, add code similar to the following that runs before you call 
http_url_post (or post_raw, or post_xml, or whatever)

      // wait up to 5 seconds for a 100-continue response:
      http_Set_100_timeout(5);

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