Testing HTTP/2 support in PHP

Hey all,

In the PR for adding HTTP/2 Server Push support to curl, Julien raises the
question of adding tests for this feature [1].

This is currently very difficult.

While we have the cli-server, it currently only supports HTTP/1.x. This
means we need another httpd to test against that supports both HTTP/2 and
server push — currently that means something like a node script using
node-http2, or nghttpd (both of which have been what I tested the patch
against).

While I have a docker container for testing, this obviously doesn't fit
well into make tests. The simplest solution along those lines is to
check
for node and run a node daemon, but it doesn't scale well to lots of use
cases, and is purely for testing.

However, Rasmus raised the possibility of adding HTTP/2 support to the
cli-server [2], and (someone? @php-pulls) suggested we pull in a third
party lib to do the heavy lifting [3].

My recommendation would be to use libnghttp2 [4] which curl also uses —
however, as this adds a new dependency, I think it should be optional
(e.g.
--with-nghttp2-dir=[PATH]), with it falling back to the current HTTP/1.x
implementation.

We could also add a flag (e.g. --[no-]http2) on the CLI for
enabling/disabling it — this would be helpful for testing HTTP/2 client
fallback when it's not supported.

I would prefer the second as http2 will be the standard to come. I'm not
even sure disabling it is worth it, but as you mention some may not want
the external library.

This is a much more useful tool than relying on node for make tests, and
allows us to test adding HTTP/2 support to ext/curl, the HTTP stream
(which
could also use libnghttp2…), userland HTTP/2 clients, pecl_http (if that's
still a thing), etc.

Agreed.

Now, I don't think I have the ability to achieve this, but I'm willing to
give it a go.

At the very least, I'm more than happy to write up the RFC and work with
someone on this.

Thoughts?

• Davey

[1] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1692#issuecomment-166935246
[2] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1692#issuecomment-166972540
[3] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1692#issuecomment-166997465
[4] https://nghttp2.org

Hi Davey,

Davey Shafik wrote:

However, Rasmus raised the possibility of adding HTTP/2 support to the
cli-server [2], and (someone? @php-pulls) suggested we pull in a third
party lib to do the heavy lifting [3].

My recommendation would be to use libnghttp2 [4] which curl also uses —
however, as this adds a new dependency, I think it should be optional (e.g.
--with-nghttp2-dir=[PATH]), with it falling back to the current HTTP/1.x
implementation.

We could also add a flag (e.g. --[no-]http2) on the CLI for
enabling/disabling it — this would be helpful for testing HTTP/2 client
fallback when it's not supported.

Hmm, this would mean a new dependency, and more potential complexity.
I'm not sure if HTTP/2 justifies it.

Also, don't all the major client implementations of HTTP/2 require TLS?
Or is localhost given a free pass?

This is a much more useful tool than relying on node for make tests, and
allows us to test adding HTTP/2 support to ext/curl, the HTTP stream (which
could also use libnghttp2…), userland HTTP/2 clients, pecl_http (if that's
still a thing), etc.

If added, I suppose it would be useful for PHP developers testing HTTP/2
features like Server Push, assuming the CLI server supported it.

Thanks.

--
Andrea Faulds
https://ajf.me/