Virtual Host support on the embedded HTTP server

[Michael McMahon]

Hi David,

Apologies for missing this when it was suggested originally.

Is there a particular use case you have in mind that requires the 
generality provided by
the HostMatcher interface? (as opposed to the simpler name based 
approach as Chris said)
Presumably, with HostMatcher, you would have to specify some way of 
deciding what to do
if multiple hosts try to claim the same request etc. Also, there would 
be a concern
whether it would scale performance wise.

Unfortunately, the fact that HttpsServer is a sub-class of HttpServer 
means we'd have to
deal with the non-support of virtual hosts in Https, at runtime, rather 
than at compile time.
But that is likely to be the case, whatever way this is done.

- Michael.

Christopher Hegarty - Sun Microsystems Ireland wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I looked at the proposal and it looks pretty good, I just have a few 
> concerns.
>
> HttpHost can be a virtual or real host, and HttpServer is an instance 
> of a HTTP server running a virtual host. I think this concept is used 
> in webservers like apache and Sun webserver. I always found it a 
> little confusing, and I'm a little concerned that it will just confuse 
> users of this simple http server API. Considering I wouldn't expect 
> may users to use this advanced feature.
>
> I wonder if we could rework a simpler approach, maybe just simple name 
> based virtual server? Possibly:
>   HttpContext createContext(String host, String path, HttpHandler 
> handler)
>
> Also, we need to think of the implications on HttpsServer.
>
> Michael (cc'ed) is the author of this API. Maybe he has an opinion.
>
> -Chris.
>
> On 07/12/2009 11:23, Christopher Hegarty - Sun Microsystems Ireland 
> wrote:
>> This is certainly interesting. Let me take a look and I'll get back 
>> to you later.
>>
>> -Chris.
>>
>> On 04/12/2009 20:17, David M. Lloyd wrote:
>>> I've crafted a simple patch which extends the API of the embedded 
>>> HTTP server to support virtual hosts.  The patch is designed to add 
>>> the new functionality without breaking existing implementations 
>>> which do not support virtual hosts, or code which uses the 
>>> HttpServer API today.  It does not include an implementation; 
>>> however, the default implementation should be easy to extend, from a 
>>> brief look over the code.
>>>
>>> The patch is attached.  Please let me know what you think.
>>>
>>> - DML
>>>