[hybi] WebSockets

Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> Mon, 30 March 2009 21:33 UTC

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:34:19 +0000
From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
To: hybi@ietf.org
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.62.0903302124580.25058@hixie.dreamhostps.com>
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Subject: [hybi] WebSockets
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The goal of the WebSocket work is to provide two-way communication from a 
Web page in a clean way. The requirements that I collected for this effort 
over the past few years are:

 - The ability for Web pages to send arbitrary text to the server from a 
   script in a Web page, in the form of ordered discrete blocks.

 - The ability for Web servers to send arbitrary text to a Web page that 
   has established a connection, in the form of ordered discrete blocks.

 - Text messages should support all of Unicode.

 - The protocol should support running over ports 80 and 443, ideally 
   with the ability to share the port on the server with an HTTP server.

 - It must be possible to implement a fully-conforming server-side 
   component for this in a few dozen lines of scripting code, in the case 
   where sharing the connection with an HTTP server isn't required.

 - The must be extensible so that it can be extended to support binary 
   data and structured data in both directions in the future, without 
   breaking deployments from the first generation.

 - It must not be possible for the mechanism to be used to successfully 
   connect to existing servers and send them arbitrary commands. In 
   particular, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, POP, and similar protocols must be 
   safe from this.

 - It must be possible to connect to arbitrary remote hosts, but 
   connections to these hosts must only be allowed if the remote host 
   explicitly opts in to allowing that Web page to connect (ideally using 
   the 'origin' convention).

I would be interested in any suggestions people may have along these 
lines. Are there existing protocols that satisfy these requirements? Are 
there requirements I have missed? Are there requirements that people think 
should not be met?

There is a strawman proposal here:

   http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/

Comments welcome.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

[hybi] WebSockets Ian Hickson
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Peter Keane
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Edward Z. Yang
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Ian Hickson
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Roy T. Fielding
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Peter Saint-Andre
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Ian Hickson
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Roy T. Fielding
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Ian Hickson
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Roy T. Fielding
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Ian Hickson
Re: [hybi] WebSockets Sylvain Hellegouarch