Application Profiles

/*
**	(c) COPYRIGHT MIT 1995.
**	Please first read the full copyright statement in the file COPYRIGH.
*/

As mentioned in the Library Architecture, libwww consists of a small core and a large set of hooks for adding functionality. By itself, the core it not capable of performing any Web related tasks like accessing a HTTP server or parsing a HTML document. All this functionality must be registered by the application. This way, the core of libwww is kept application independent and can be used as the basic building block for any kind of Web application.

The Library comes with a large set of default functions, for example for accessing HTTP and FTP servers, parsing RFC 822 headers etc. but it must all be registered by the application before the core knows about it. You can either register the parts directly through the many initialization functions in the Initialization Interface or you can use these "precompiled" profiles which are set up to contain the featuers often used by the a specific type of application, for example a client, a server, a robot etc.

This module helps the application programmer setting up all this functionality, but it is important to note that none of it is required in order to use the Library. All the profiles declared below superseed the Library core initialization function HTLibInit() which is defined in the HTLib module.

This module is implemented by HTProfil.c, and it is a part of the W3C Sample Code Library. You can also have a look at the other Initialization modules.

#ifndef HTPROF_H
#define HTPROF_H
#include "WWWLib.h"
#include "WWWInit.h"

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" { 
#endif 

Client Application Profiles

We have a couple of different client application profiles suited to different types of clients.

Traditional Client Application

The first uses a non-blocking socket interface which enables the application to perform multiple requests simultanously - in everyday words called pseudo-threads. Besides that this profile contains typical filters for handling redirection, authentication, logging, and proxy servers.

extern void HTProfile_newClient (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Simple HTML Client

As above but furthermore contains the default libwww HTML parser

extern void HTProfile_newHTMLClient (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Client without a Persistent Cache

This is the same as above except that it doesn't start the persistent cache.

extern void HTProfile_newNoCacheClient (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Simple HTML Client without Persistent Cache

As above but furthermore contains the default libwww HTML parser

extern void HTProfile_newHTMLNoCacheClient (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Preemptive (Blocking) Client

Do not use preemptive profiles if you are doing PUT or POST requests.

We also have a blocking (preemptive) version of the same client interface. The difference is that this version uses traditional blocking sockets and hence only one request can be performed at the same time.

extern void HTProfile_newPreemptiveClient (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Robot Application Profile

The robot profile contains much of the same functionality as the client, but it does contain less filters. For example, robots are normally not interested in performing automatic redirections or access authentication, and hence this is not part of the robot profile.

extern void HTProfile_newRobot (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Do not use preemptive profiles if you are doing PUT or POST requests.

As for the client interfacem we also have a blocking (preemptive) version of the same interface. The difference is that this version uses traditional blocking sockets and hence only one reques can be performed at the same time.

extern void HTProfile_newPreemptiveRobot (
	const char * AppName,
	const char * AppVersion);

Delete a Profile

This is a generic profile cleanup that should be used on all the profiles above. This will clean up the memory allocated by the profile and by the Library core itself. After calling this you can not call any Library function again. This call also supersedes the termination function for the Library core, HTLibTerminate() so that you don't have to call that after calling this function.

extern void HTProfile_delete (void);

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

#endif  /* HTPROF_H */