Hello all,
If this is not the appropriate place for this type of proposal please let me know.
The modules http.client and http.server both do a wonderful job when implementing HTTP clients and servers, respectively. However, occasionally there may be a need to create and parse HTTP messages themselves without needing to implement a client or server. While http.client and http.server clearly have solved this problem for its own uses, there is little to no public API exposed to a user wishing to do the same. For instance, the documentation for http.client.HTTPMessage [1] simply states that it extends from email.message.Message in order to parse the messages.
While this need may admittedly be a niche one, it is a shame that one cannot simply use the functionality already implemented for http.client and http.server for this purpose. Therefore, I am proposing this module be improved such that the creation and parsing of HTTP messages be "pulled out of" the existing code into HTTPRequest and HTTPResponse classes with a public API for this purpose. The exact API is subject to change of course, but it could work like:
>>> r = http.client.HTTPRequest("POST", "/foo", "Hello world!")
>>> r.method
'POST'
>>> r.body
'Hello world!'
>>> print(r)
POST /foo HTTP/1.1
Content-Length: 12
Hello world!
If this idea is not completely a bad one, I am very interested in discussing in further detail how I (or perhaps someone else) could begin to implement these changes.
Thank you for reading.