Feature Request: Add ability to get server capability

[kurtsansom]

e.g.

  def check_server():
    url = SERVER + '/capabilities'
    log('Reading %s' % url, opts)
    res = urlopen(url)
    meta = jsonparse(res, url)
    return meta

[rweigel]

I'll have this added for the next release.

[rweigel]

I am curious about what this would be used for. If you are adding custom x_ elements, we'd be interested in hearing about it. There is a discussion right now among the spec developers on a related issue.

[kurtsansom]

My main objective was trying to think of a simple way to do a sanity check (ring the door bell). i.e. make small request to see if I have the right address. this seemed like a convenient way that returns something small, but didn't exist in the client.

It seems like it would be very useful if I wanted to add a compressed output format, and be able to check if it's available? I found hapi yesterday, so it is still new to me.

[rweigel]

Thanks. I'll raise this issue with the standards group. It would be useful to have a standard way of doing this.

[rweigel]

A full year has elapsed on this ... there has been some progress but probably you have worked around it already.

[jbfaden]

Regarding compression, I've always relied on HTTP encoding, where you can let the server (apache for example) transmit the data compressed. See for example https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Content-Encoding .

[rweigel]

For compression, I would try what @jbfaden discussed earlier. We don't have a compressed format because the HTTP spec already solves the problem. The server just needs to be configured to send compressed data over the wire. Most client libraries will transparently decompress. Currently, the hapiclient does not tell the server that it can handle compressed content, and that needs to be modified.