GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 526755
data: and file: protocols support
Last modified: 2008-04-19 12:34:52 UTC
Please consider the two useful protocols data: and file: to be implemented in libsoup 2.4. I think the API would be simple and applications could benefit very much of the file: protocol instead of implementing their own functions. Also it can be very helpful for the webkit GTK+ port, including the data: protocol.
OK, having thought about this, I think we shouldn't add this to libsoup, for two reasons: 1) WebKit probably wants ftp support as well, and that's certainly not going to happen in libsoup 2) I don't think any applications besides web browsers would actually benefit from this. Every other app that uses libsoup uses it very explicitly for just HTTP stuff. Other apps use gio/gvfs, for generic access to both http and other protocols. Even if you look at apps using libcurl, they can mostly be broken down into "apps that use libcurl for multiple protocol types and don't use HTTP-specific options" and "apps that use libcurl for HTTP and don't use multiple protocol types". Only web browsers care about having BOTH explicit HTTP support AND also generic non-HTTP support via the same API. So that suggests that the merged API should exist at the web-browser level, not the libsoup level. So I think the right fix is for ResourceHandleSoup to use libsoup for http: and https:, and use gio for read-only access to other URI schemes (file:, ftp:, ftps:). (I've already started writing some code for that.)
*** Bug 528861 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***