Re: [libmicrohttpd] HTTP2 support for MHD

[Tim Rühsen]

Hey Maru,


that's awesome, great news !


I am looking forward to extend GNU Wget2's test suite to support http/2 :-)
We are using MHD for the test suite's server side.

Thank you so much for working on this !

Regard, Tim


On 30.03.2018 14:48, Maru Berezin wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> My name is Maru and in the last few months I've been implementing HTTP2
> support for MHD, as a personal programming project.
>
> https://github.com/maru/libmicrohttpd-http2
>
> I've just finished a first alpha release, so I wanted to share my work
> with you.
>
> Some implementation details:
>
> - I chose the library nghttp2 for handling the HTTP/2 protocol. It works
>   with byte strings (input and output), leaving the handling of I/O
>   operations to the user. It is widely used in other projects, such as
>   curl and Apache httpd.
>
> - I wanted to implement HTTP2 in the least "intrusive" way possible.
>   HTTP2 support is disabled by default, and HTTP2 code is only available
>   when HTTP2 is enabled.
>
> - I followed the HTTPS implementation:
>   - enable HTTP2 in the configure script,
>   - use #ifdef in the MHD legacy code,
>   - all the implementation code is in the connection_http2.{c,h} files
>     (connection_http2_helper.h code is only for debug purposes).
>
> To test the HTTP2 protocol, I used h2spec 
> https://github.com/summerwind/h2spec .
> It is a conformance testing tool for HTTP/2 implementation. It is
> compliant with RFC 7540 (HTTP/2) http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7540.txt
> and RFC 7541 (HPACK)  http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7541.txt .
>
> I also modified the existing MHD tests, so the server and client use HTTP2.
>
> The use of HTTP2 is very simple and straightforward:
>   - User just adds "MHD_USE_HTTP2" flag when calling MHD_start_daemon.
>   - HTTP2 server settings can be modified using the MHD_OPTION_H2_SETTINGS
>     option (see src/examples/minimal_example.c).
>
> Changes:
> - Tests: daemons (and curl clients) run in HTTP1 and HTTP2 mode.
> - src/examples/: can enable HTTP2 support with the command line option "-h2".
> - Added some functions in src/microhttpd/test_helpers.h
> - Example of adding a trailer in src/examples/chunked_example.c
> - Implemented TLS-ALPN (allows protocol negotiation during the TLS handshake).
> - Added HTTP2 connection states to MHD_CONNECTION_STATE (but not sure of
>   its usefulness).
>
> To do:
> - Modify the http2_stream structure. It's very ugly and messy...
> - Allow HTTP1 upgrades to HTTP2 (right now, MHD only handles one version:
>   HTTP1 or HTTP2).
> - Improve the performance.
> - More HTTP2-related tests.
> - Handle suspend/resume actions correctly (now implemented for only one 
> stream).
> - Finish the verbose/debugging information of sessions and frames (I like
>   the format used in nghttp client/server).
>
> Finally: I pulled all the last commits in libmicrohttpd, and merged them
> with my code. All tests and examples were run on Linux and passed!
>
> I followed the coding style of MHD, but there might be incorrectly
> formatted line lengths/variable names/braces.
>
> How to build MHD with HTTP2 support:
>
> - First, download the library nghttp2:
>
>   (I used version 1.24.0 for the development, but I also tested MHD with
>   the last release v1.31.0)
>
>     https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2/releases
>
>   The following package is required to build the libnghttp2 library:
>     pkg-config >= 0.20
>
>   You can build nghttp2:
>
>     configure --prefix=${PREFIX_DIR} --enable-lib-only
>     make && make install
>
> - To run the curl tests, install a curl version 7.49.0 (with newer
>   releases, some HTTP2 tests fail: test_timeout_http2 and
>   test_get_response_cleanup_http2. I will investigate).
>
>     https://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.49.0.tar.gz
>
>   You can build libcurl:
>
>     configure --prefix=${PREFIX_DIR} --with-nghttp2=${PREFIX_DIR} 
> --without-ssl --with-gnutls
>     make && make install
>
> - Download libmicrohttpd-http2:
>
>     https://github.com/maru/libmicrohttpd-http2/archive/v0.1.0.tar.gz
>
> - I also set:
>
>     export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PREFIX_DIR}/lib
>
> - To enable HTTP2 in MHD, you need to configure it:
>
>     configure --enable-http2 --with-nghttp2=${PREFIX_DIR}
>
> - Finally, run:
>
>     make && make check
>
> All comments, questions, and suggestions are more than welcome!
>
> Best regards,
> Maru
>

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