On Tue, 20 Jun 2017, Andrew wrote:

> He suggests a new API where the form is an opaque handle that you get from
> curl_form_init, and then you call curl_form_addpart on the form handle to
> get a handle to a new part. Parts are populated with curl_form_set_name and
> curl_form_set_data.
>
> I really like the idea of using an opaque handle instead of a pointer to a
> list of structures, and this is basically how I already present it in my
> binding.

Right, and that's also what we're using widely in libcurl already so that's
more in line with how we usually do things. Opaque handles are way easier to
support, especially long term.

> It also seems like encoding several CURLFORM_FILE in the same form part
> might be a problem if curl_form_set_data overwrites the previous data.

How do you think we should provide a "file" in the first place? I can probably
see us having a curl_form_set_file() function for that, to be used instead of
_data() for a part. Then we could allow multiple such function calls to add
more files in the same part. Files are data as well, sure, but they do have
some more metadata that might make sense to provide in a separate function
call.

I think it might make sense to come up with 3-4 "typical" formposts and how
they would be done with this new API so that we feel that it works smoothly
with those.

> Seemingly missing in the proposal are equivalents for CURLFORM_STREAM and
> CURLFORM_BUFFERPTR. If curl_form_set_data were to always copy the data then
> I don't see how these modes could be made to work. Perhaps if instead of
> separate functions for the name and data there were a single
> curl_form_setopt function?

Hm, I was trying to make this API without using varargs arguments. I think I
rather try separate functions.

CURLFORM_BUFFERPTR could possibly be done with the curl_form_set_file()
function somehow. Perhaps as simple as:

   /* read a file from disk, use the file name in the part */
   curl_form_set_file(part, "filename", 0, NULL);

   /* read a file from disk, set a custom file name in the part */
   curl_form_set_file(part, "filename", 0, "curl.tar.gz");

   /* pass a buffer of size 'len', call the file "monkey" */
   curl_form_set_file(part, ptr, len, "monkey");

For CURLFORM_STREAM, we could maybe make curl_form_set_data() either accept an
additional "flags" argument to set this or, I think less good, we could abuse
the length argument to have magic values.

> This would also mean that you don't need separate functions for
> CURLFORM_CONTENTTYPE, CURLFORM_CONTENTHEADER, etc.

Right, we need those too.

   curl_form_set_type(part, "text/html");

   curl_form_set_headers(part, slist); /* standard created list */

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se
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