HTTPHeader

The HTTP header group manages generalised internet problems;

• MIME Types & encoding
• HTTP Errors
• HTTP Headers
• SMTP Headers
• Internet object retrieval

The MIME types and encoding subgroup, provide facilities for translating between windows file type extensions, and mime types. It's essentially a lookup mechanism, that is configured from a CSV resource file. The lookup has been derived as a result of scouring the internet for all the types we could reasonably be expected to work with. This subgroup also provides an extension to one of the standard byte block container classes, which associates a mime type with binary data. This extension provides the capacity to convert data to and from Quoted Printable, and Base64, each a common internet format. The mime object can be fired directly to disk, serialised with other objects or rendered as text, to a data stream.

HTTP Errors is another lookup module capable of dealing with HTTP errors. It can generate and decode full and partial HTTP Error strings, and convert between numeric and string errors. It's lookup mechanism means that it always has a human readable error string for any decipherable HTTP error.

HTTP Headers is a scheme intended for use in web server applications. It deals with URL encoding, cookies and get or post data, including most of the widely used multipart formats. The object makes the difference between get and post inconsequential. A single pseudo abstract base class is provided that allows one to use the header processor with any given web server. Subclasses are provided that interface the HTTP Header scheme with a standard CGI-bin webserver (like Apache) or with an ISAPI webserver (like IIS).

Typically this module is initialised in the server when an HTTP request is made to the web server. The data associated with the request can easily be extracted, whereupon the response can be formulated. The module allows for the separation of returned HTTP headers from actual page data. Once the response, and it's headers are formulated in this module, a single function call causes full data to be returned to the requester.

SMTP Headers is a scheme for formatting and posting multipart MIME email messages. It deals with all aspects of authentication with the remote mail server, and allows full HTML pages, with backup text formats, and attachments to be sent by e-mail without the need for external references to image data and other resources.

These capabilities work well with the SGML parser, and mean that very dynamic integrated web solutions can all be generated easily in C++.