phttp

Poor man's http protocol for transporting a status/run line, a header block and a content block

0. Motivation

The http protocol is good, but very difficult to parse and is too complicated to implement. During the development of one of my projects, I needed a very lightweight solution for transmitting messages between internal services, so this protocol is developed.

1. Concepts and Structure

1.1 Connection

The protocol is built on a TCP connection and is intended for LAN usage. Messages are transmitted as a stream of blocks without deduplication. TLS could be implemented over raw TCP streams for added security.

1.2 Messages

1.2.1 RequestLine Message

The request message consists of a run line block, a headers block, and data blocks.

1.2.2 ResponseLine Message

The run message consists of a response line block, a headers block, and data blocks.

1.2.3 Blocks

Each block contains its message id for potential interleaved blocks. Block is formatted as following:

int32_le message_id;
int32_le block_size;
byte[block_size] content;

Data-blocks are sequences in the same order as they appeared in the stream.

1.2.4 phttp_string

int32_le utf8_length;
char8_t[utf8_length] content;

1.2.5 RequestLine Line

phttp_string verb;
phttp_string version;
phttp_string resource_location;

1.2.6 ResponseLine Line

int32_le http_status_code;
phttp_string http_response_message;

1.2.7 Headers

int32_le entry_count;
phttp_string[entry_count][2] header_entries;