Yep; an existance proof is server push, which is very similar (but
not XML-based);
http://wp.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/pushpull.html
On 21/08/2005, at 9:36 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
A. Pagaltzis wrote:
* Bob Wyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-08-22 01:05]:
What do you think? Is there any conceptual problem with
streaming basic Atom over TCP/IP, HTTP continuous sessions
(probably using chunked content) etc.?
I wonder how you would make sure that the document is
well-formed. Since the stream never actually ends and there is no
way for a client to signal an intent to close the connection, the
<feed> at the top would never actually be accompanied by a
</feed> at the bottom.
If you accept that the stream can never be a complete well-formed
document, is there any reason not to simply send a stream of
concatenated Atom Entry Documents?
That would seem like the absolute simplest solution.
I think the keyword in the above is "complete".
SAX is a popular API for dealing with streaming XML (and there are a
number of "pull parsing" APIs too). It makes individual elements
available to your application as they are read. If at any point, the
SAX parser determines that your feed is not well formed, it throws an
error at that point.
With a HTTP client library and SAX, the "absolute simplest
solution" is
what Bob is describing: a single document that never completes.
Note that if your application were to discard all the data it receives
before it encouters the first entry, the stream from there on out
would
be identical.
- Sam Ruby
--
Mark Nottingham Principal Technologist
Office of the CTO BEA Systems
