[PHP] HTTP 1.1 keep-alive support in ext/soap/php_http.c ? (fwd) View as Markdown

Keep-alive support in SOAP is often problematic as most SOAP frameworks
were originally developed under the assumptions that the SOAP HTTP
binding would be HTTP 1.0, which is no longer the case.

Since RPC SOAP operations are not like document downloading in the
strict HTTP sense, frameworks have done different things depending on
the situation. For example, gSOAP supports HTTP 1.1 but only sends the
HTTP authorization header when it first establishes the connection.
This places additional requirements on a SOAP server with a gSOAP/HTTP
1.1 client to recognize that the authorization happened at the
connection level and multiple SOAP invocations could be taking place
over that connection. I'm not saying gSOAP is correct, I'm just saying
that putting connection re-use and keep alives into the mix requires you
to deal with interoperability issues at yet another level.

My vote would be if you're going to allow HTTP 1.1 keep alives to be
sent, we need to give access to the programmer to use or not to use
them. Otherwise, I would never send keep alives.

In PEAR::SOAP, there is a level of control with this for HTTP bindings
since you can get access to curl for setting whatever HTTP configuration
you want.

For PHP5 SOAP, I would like to eventually see some more control over the
SOAP binding, in line with the SOAP 1.2 Messaging Framework
specification.

Regards,
Al

Shall I submit a bug/patch to uncomment the HTTP 1.1 support? Is it still
broken with proxy servers?

Thanks,

l8*
-lava (Brian A. Seklecki - Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
http://www.spiritual-machines.org/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:33:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian A. Seklecki lavalamp@spiritual-machines.org
To: php-general@lists.php.net
Subject: Re: [PHP] HTTP 1.1 keep-alive support in ext/soap/php_http.c ? (fwd)

Found it:

http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/ext/soap/php_http.c?annotate=1.109

Lines 892->895 and 903->905 bring the violence.

Rev 1.28 commented it out:

http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/ext/soap/php_http.c?r1=1.27&r2=1.28

The bugs assocaited with it are:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=33164
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=30329

Please advise on a course of action -- I will open another bug report if
requested.

http://wiki.apache.org/ws/FrontPage/Axis/AxisCommonsHTTP

Extract from [WWW] RFC 2616 : HTTP/1.1 - Persistent Connection :

"* An HTTP/1.1 server MAY assume that a HTTP/1.1 client intends to maintain a
persistent connection unless a Connection header including the connection-token
"close" was sent in the request."

Then presumably, unless the server explicitly closes the connection by
instructing the client to do so in headers, the client may simply check for the
presence of "HTTP/1.1" and continue to cane the connection/socket.

Cane one!

~BAS

Re-send to php-general@ since soap@ is a ghost town.

Per the msg below, still trying to figure out why each client call to any
server results in a new TCP socket being built and closed (BAD!)

I finally got around to:
print "Request :\n" . $soapClient->__getLastRequestHeaders() . "\n";
print "Request :\n" . $soapClient->__getLastRequest() . "\n";
print "Response:\n" . $soapClient->__getLastResponseHeaders() . "\n";
print "Response:\n" . $soapClient->__getLastResponse() . "\n";

As well as checking tcpdump(8) --- my worst fears are confirmed.

The client headers says:
Connection: Keep-Alive

The server header response says:
Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/soap+xml;charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 22:35:07 GMT
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1

And yet, the PHP client running from the CLI binary executing the same
function call to the server opens & closes two sockets to accomplish the
work!

~BAS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 11:51:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brian A. Seklecki lavalamp@spiritual-machines.org
To: soap@lists.php.net
Subject: [SOAP] HTTP 1.1 keep-alive support in ext/soap/php_http.c ?

All:

Am I correct in reading ext/soap/php_http.c that the SoapClient / SoapServer
object will not transmit a "Connection: Close" line into the HTTP header
(either via the Client call itself or by modifying Apache's response?)

E.g., by default PHP SOAP client recycles HTTP connections to the server for
calls to methods using the same server object / instance?

l8*
-lava (Brian A. Seklecki - Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
http://www.spiritual-machines.org/

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l8*
-lava (Brian A. Seklecki - Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
http://www.spiritual-machines.org/

 "Guilty? Yeah. But he knows it. I mean, you're guilty.
 You just don't know it. So who's really in jail?"
 ~Maynard James Keenan