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Re: Detecting final frame of a received WebSocket message.

From: Paul Fotheringham via curl-library <curl-library_at_lists.haxx.se>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2023 23:53:57 +0100

I went ahead and put a PR up for this.

On Wed, 13 Sept 2023 at 20:52, Paul Fotheringham
<fotheringham.paul_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I posted back in July asking about how to detect the final frame in a
> fragmented WebSocket message because I couldn't see how it was exposed
> in the libcurl API. Daniel, you asked some questions so apologies for
> the delay.
>
> I can confirm that the received frames in my own set-up were all
> received as complete frames i.e. the bytesleft field was set to zero
> in each.
>
> You were looking for a simple example. I've had a look at the libtest
> stuff and was going to put one together when I noticed that the
> existing test case libtest/lib2305.c is a perfect example!
>
> In 2305 the server is told to send a 12291 byte message over 3 frames
> each containing 4097 bytes of the message. The frame headers in hex
> (all 4 bytes) are (from data/test2305):
>
> frame 1 header: 01 7e 10 01
> frame 2 header: 01 7e 10 01
> frame 3 header: 81 7e 10 01
>
> where the first byte determines the FIN bit and the opcode. The
> remaining three bytes are all payload size-related so can be ignored.
> The first bit of the first byte is the FIN flag so it is unset in the
> first two frames and set in the last which would indicate to me that
> this is a genuine, complete multi-frame message.
>
> The last four bits of the first byte are the opcode so it is
> CURLWS_TEXT in each. This is not what the websocket standard describes
> for a fragmented message though. The first frame should be
> CURLWS_TEXT, but the second and third should both be CURLWS_CONT i.e.
> 4 rather than 1.
>
> Regardless of the opcode mix-up there is still no way AFAICS see to
> detect the final frame via the API as the FIN bit is not exposed in
> the curl_ws_frame meta structure. The test code simply counts the
> bytes received and stops when it hits 12291 but that will not work in
> general as the size of a fragmented message never appears on the wire
> at any point (as part of the protocol) and may not even be known by
> the sender at the point the first frame is sent.
>
> I also now realise that sending a fragmented message seems to be
> impossible too for a varietly of reasons but I can go into that in a
> further post.
>
> For this receiving issue (and ultimately the sending issue) can I
> propose that we add an int into the curl_ws_frame to correspond to the
> FIN bit (in future this can also house the three other reserved flag
> bits)?
>
> If that sounds okay then I am happy to create a PR for it including
> updating test 2305 to use it.
>
> Paul
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Received on 2023-09-19