MintWebSocket v1.0.3

View Source Mint.WebSocket.Extension behaviour (MintWebSocket v1.0.3)

Tools for defining extensions to the WebSocket protocol

The WebSocket protocol allows for extensions which act as middle-ware in the encoding and decoding of frames. In Mint.WebSocket, extensions are written as module which implement the Mint.WebSocket.Extension behaviour.

The common "permessage-deflate" extension is built-in to Mint.WebSocket as Mint.WebSocket.PerMessageDeflate. This extension should be used as a reference when writing future extensions, but future extensions should be written as separate libraries which extend Mint.WebSocket instead of built-in. Also note that extensions must operate on the internal representations of frames using the records defined in Mint.WebSocket.Frame, which are not documented.

Link to this section Summary

Types

params()

Parameters to configure an extension

t()

A structure representing an instance of an extension

Callbacks

decode(frame, state)

Invoked when decoding frames after receiving them from the wire

encode(frame, state)

Invoked when encoding frames before sending them across the wire

init(this_extension, all_extensions)

Invoked when the WebSocket server accepts an extension

name()

Returns the name of the WebSocket extension

Link to this section Types

Link to this type

params()

View Source 
@type params() :: [
  atom() | String.t() | {atom() | String.t(), boolean() | String.t()}
]

Parameters to configure an extension

Some extensions can be configured by negotiation between the client and server. For example "permessage-deflate" usually shows up as in the "sec-websocket-extensions" header literally like so:

Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate

But the zlib window sizes and reset behavior can be negotiated with parameters with headers like so

Sec-WebSocket-Extensions: permessage-deflate; client_no_context_takeover; client_max_window_bits=12

These can be configured by passing parameters to any element passed in the :extensions option to Mint.WebSocket.upgrade/4.

For example, one might write the above parameter configuration as

[
  {Mint.WebSocket.PerMessageDeflate,
   [client_no_context_takeover: true, client_max_window_bits: 12]}
]

when passing the :extensions option to Mint.WebSocket.upgrade/4.

Note that Mint.WebSocket.upgrade/4 will normalize the parameters of an extension to a list of two-tuples with string keys and values. For example, the above would be normalized to this extensions list:

[
  %Mint.WebSocket.Extension{
    name: "permessage-deflate",
    module: Mint.WebSocket.PerMessageDeflate,
    params: [
      {"client_no_context_takeover", "true"},
      {"client_max_window_bits", "12"}
    ],
    state: nil,
    opts: []
  }
]
Link to this type

t()

View Source 
@type t() :: %Mint.WebSocket.Extension{
  module: module(),
  name: String.t(),
  opts: Keyword.t(),
  params: params(),
  state: term()
}

A structure representing an instance of an extension

Extensions are implemented as modules but passed to Mint.WebSocket as Mint.WebSocket.Extension structs with the following keys:

  • :name - the name of the extension. When using the short-hand tuple syntax to pass extensions to Mint.WebSocket.upgrade/4, the name is determined by calling the name/0 callback.
  • :module - the module which implements the callbacks defined in the Mint.WebSocket.Extension behavior.
  • :state - an arbitrary piece of data curated by the extension. For example, the "permessage-deflate" extension uses this field to hold t:zlib.zstream()s for compression and decompression.
  • :params - a list with key-value tuples or atom/string keys which configure the parameters communicated to the server. All params are encoded into the "sec-websocket-extensions" header. Also see the documentation for params/0.
  • :opts - a keyword list to pass configuration to the extension. These are not encoded into the "sec-websocket-extensions" header. For example, :opts is used by the "permessage-deflate" extension to configure :zlib configuration.

Link to this section Callbacks

Link to this callback

decode(frame, state)

View Source 
@callback decode(frame :: tuple(), state :: term()) ::
  {:ok, frame :: tuple(), state :: term()} | {:error, term()}

Invoked when decoding frames after receiving them from the wire

Error tuples bubble up to Mint.WebSocket.decode/2.

Link to this callback

encode(frame, state)

View Source 
@callback encode(frame :: tuple(), state :: term()) ::
  {:ok, frame :: tuple(), state :: term()} | {:error, term()}

Invoked when encoding frames before sending them across the wire

Error tuples bubble up to Mint.WebSocket.encode/2.

Link to this callback

init(this_extension, all_extensions)

View Source 
@callback init(this_extension :: t(), all_extensions :: t()) ::
  {:ok, t()} | {:error, term()}

Invoked when the WebSocket server accepts an extension

This callback should be used to initialize any :state that the extension needs to operate. For example, this callback is used by the "permessage-deflate" extension to setup t::zlib.zstream()s and store them in state.

The all_extensions argument is passed so that the extension can know about the existence and ordering of other extensions. This can be useful if a client declares multiple extensions which accomplish the same job (such as multiple compression extensions) but want to only enable one based on what the server accepts.

Note that extensions are initialized in the order in which the server accepts them: any extensions preceeding this_extension in all_extensions are initialized while any extensions after this_extension are not yet initialized.

Error tuples bubble up to Mint.WebSocket.upgrade/4.

Link to this callback

name()

View Source 
@callback name() :: String.t()

Returns the name of the WebSocket extension

This should not include the parameters for the extension, such as "client_max_window_bits" for the "permessage-deflate" extension.

examples

 Examples 

iex> Mint.WebSocket.PerMessageDeflate.name()
"permessage-deflate"