What happens first to a "GET" request from a www client?

 

The #0:do_login_command is called whatever commands are used before connection as a character (or guest). So if you telnet to the moo, there are certain commands (like help, welcome, @who, connect), which you can use and which are all defined on the $login object as ``any none any'' verbs. As an example, the #0:do_login_command calls the $login:connect verb after a user entered 'connect xxx yyy'. Before authentication the user is assigned a negative number and after connection his client connection will be ``attached'' to his own character and further things not discussed here will happen.

So each ``GET'' request to the moo (i.e. a www client requesting an URL) also goes first through the #0:do_login_command. Command parsing is all done by $login(#10) verbs as you can see here:

 #0:"do_login_command"   this none this
 ......
 19: args = $login:parse_command(@args);
 20: return $login:(args[1])(@listdelete(args, 1));

In principle, other http requests could also be parsed and answered (such as post etc) by putting verbs of that name on $login. (Post is being developed experimentally at the moment at MOOtiny by Jeny 25/9/95).

In the case of a ``GET'' http request the $login:get verb will be executed. This verb rebuilds the URL in some ways (more later ...) and passes the contents of 'GET ....' command to the www layer. It calls $web:hdisplay like this:

keep = $web:hdisplay($web:get_htext(req, rc, player));

  where:                             
  req is the URL, e.g.
      /key=628528948/1835

  rc is the headers received (client/referer information), e.g.
      {"Referer: http://tecfamoo.unige.ch:7777/key=628528948/1834",
       "User-Agent: Mozilla/1.1N (X11; I; SunOS 5.4 sun4m)",
       "Accept: */*", "Accept: image/gif", "Accept: image/x-xbitmap", 
       "Accept: image/jpeg", ""}

  player is player no, e.g. #-451

A note about client headers: As well as the request for a certain page, the web client also sends headers such as identifying what the client is, sometimes asking the server to only send the page if it's been modified since the last time it got it, and so on. See the documentation on the offical http protocol page for more details (e.g. study the HTTP/1.0 Internet Draft.

If :hdisplay doesn't do a server push (returning a positive value) the connection is closed as expected from a ordinary http server.