neon.3 8.7 KB

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  1. '\" t
  2. .\" Title: neon
  3. .\" Author:
  4. .\" Generator: DocBook XSL Stylesheets vsnapshot <http://docbook.sf.net/>
  5. .\" Date: 21 January 2023
  6. .\" Manual: neon API reference
  7. .\" Source: neon 0.32.5
  8. .\" Language: English
  9. .\"
  10. .TH "NEON" "3" "21 January 2023" "neon 0.32.5" "neon API reference"
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  12. .\" * Define some portability stuff
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  15. .\" http://bugs.debian.org/507673
  16. .\" http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2009-02/msg00013.html
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  24. .nh
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  26. .ad l
  27. .\" -----------------------------------------------------------------
  28. .\" * MAIN CONTENT STARTS HERE *
  29. .\" -----------------------------------------------------------------
  30. .SH "NAME"
  31. neon \- HTTP and WebDAV client library
  32. .SH "DESCRIPTION"
  33. .PP
  34. neon is an HTTP and WebDAV client library\&. The major abstractions exposed are the HTTP
  35. \fIsession\fR, created by
  36. ne_session_create; and the HTTP
  37. \fIrequest\fR, created by
  38. ne_request_create\&. HTTP authentication is handled transparently for server and proxy servers, see
  39. ne_set_server_auth; complete SSL/TLS support is also included, see
  40. ne_ssl_set_verify\&.
  41. .SH "CONVENTIONS"
  42. .PP
  43. Some conventions are used throughout the neon API, to provide a consistent and simple interface; these are documented below\&.
  44. .SS "Thread\-safeness and global initialization"
  45. .PP
  46. neon itself is implemented to be thread\-safe (avoiding any use of global state), but relies on the operating system providing a thread\-safe resolver interface\&. Modern operating systems offer the thread\-safe
  47. \fBgetaddrinfo\fR
  48. interface, which neon supports; some others implement
  49. \fBgethostbyname\fR
  50. using thread\-local storage\&.
  51. .PP
  52. To allow thread\-safe use of SSL in the OpenSSL and GnuTLS libraries neon must be configured using the
  53. \-\-enable\-threadsafe\-ssl; if this is done, locking callbacks will be registered by
  54. ne_sock_init; note that care must be exercised if neon is used in conjunction with another library which uses OpenSSL or GnuTLS\&.
  55. .PP
  56. Some platforms and libraries used by neon require global initialization before use; notably:
  57. .sp
  58. .RS 4
  59. .ie n \{\
  60. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  61. .\}
  62. .el \{\
  63. .sp -1
  64. .IP \(bu 2.3
  65. .\}
  66. The
  67. SIGPIPE
  68. signal disposition must be set to
  69. \fIignored\fR
  70. or otherwise handled to avoid process termination when writing to a socket which has been shutdown by the peer\&.
  71. .RE
  72. .sp
  73. .RS 4
  74. .ie n \{\
  75. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  76. .\}
  77. .el \{\
  78. .sp -1
  79. .IP \(bu 2.3
  80. .\}
  81. OpenSSL and GnuTLS require global initialization to load shared lookup tables\&.
  82. .RE
  83. .sp
  84. .RS 4
  85. .ie n \{\
  86. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  87. .\}
  88. .el \{\
  89. .sp -1
  90. .IP \(bu 2.3
  91. .\}
  92. The Win32 socket library requires initialization before use\&.
  93. .RE
  94. .sp
  95. The
  96. ne_sock_init
  97. function should be called before any other use of neon to perform any necessary initialization needed for the particular platform\&. Applications wishing to perform all the necessary process\-global initialization steps themselves may omit to call
  98. ne_sock_init
  99. (and
  100. ne_sock_exit); neon neither checks whether these functions are called nor calls them itself\&.
  101. .PP
  102. For some applications and configurations it may be necessary to call
  103. ne_i18n_init
  104. to initialize the support for internationalization in neon\&.
  105. .SS "Asynchronous signal safety"
  106. .PP
  107. No function in neon is defined to be
  108. \(lqasync\-signal safe\(rq
  109. \- that is, no function is safe to call from a signal handler\&. Any call into the neon library from a signal handler will have undefined behaviour \- in other words, it may crash the process\&.
  110. .SS "Functions using global state"
  111. .PP
  112. Any function in neon may modify the
  113. errno
  114. global variable as a side\-effect\&. Except where explicitly documented, the value of
  115. errno
  116. is unspecified after any neon function call\&.
  117. .PP
  118. Other than in the use of
  119. errno, the only functions which use or modify process\-global state in neon are as follows:
  120. .sp
  121. .RS 4
  122. .ie n \{\
  123. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  124. .\}
  125. .el \{\
  126. .sp -1
  127. .IP \(bu 2.3
  128. .\}
  129. ne_sock_init,
  130. ne_i18n_init, and
  131. ne_sock_exit, as described above
  132. .RE
  133. .sp
  134. .RS 4
  135. .ie n \{\
  136. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  137. .\}
  138. .el \{\
  139. .sp -1
  140. .IP \(bu 2.3
  141. .\}
  142. \fBne_debug_init\fR
  143. and
  144. \fBne_debug\fR, if enabled at compile time; for debugging output
  145. .RE
  146. .sp
  147. .RS 4
  148. .ie n \{\
  149. \h'-04'\(bu\h'+03'\c
  150. .\}
  151. .el \{\
  152. .sp -1
  153. .IP \(bu 2.3
  154. .\}
  155. ne_oom_callback
  156. for installing a process\-global callback to be invoked on
  157. \fBmalloc\fR
  158. failure
  159. .RE
  160. .SS "Namespaces"
  161. .PP
  162. To avoid possible collisions between names used for symbols and preprocessor macros by an application and the libraries it uses, it is good practice for each library to reserve a particular
  163. \fInamespace prefix\fR\&. An application which ensures it uses no names with these prefixes is then guaranteed to avoid such collisions\&.
  164. .PP
  165. The neon library reserves the use of the namespace prefixes
  166. ne_
  167. and
  168. NE_\&. The libraries used by neon may also reserve certain namespaces; collisions between these libraries and a neon\-based application will not be detected at compile time, since the underlying library interfaces are not exposed through the neon header files\&. Such collisions can only be detected at link time, when the linker attempts to resolve symbols\&. The following list documents some of the namespaces claimed by libraries used by neon; this list may be incomplete\&.
  169. .PP
  170. SSL, ssl, TLS, tls, ERR_, BIO_, d2i_, i2d_, ASN1_
  171. .RS 4
  172. Some of the many prefixes used by the OpenSSL library; little attempt has been made to keep exported symbols within any particular prefixes for this library\&.
  173. .RE
  174. .PP
  175. gnutls_, gcry_, gpg_
  176. .RS 4
  177. Namespaces used by the GnuTLS library (and dependencies thereof)
  178. .RE
  179. .PP
  180. XML_, Xml[A\-Z]
  181. .RS 4
  182. Namespaces used by the expat library\&.
  183. .RE
  184. .PP
  185. xml[A\-Z], html[A\-Z], docb[A\-Z]
  186. .RS 4
  187. Namespaces used by the libxml2 library; a relatively small number of symbols are used without these prefixes\&.
  188. .RE
  189. .PP
  190. inflate, deflate, crc32, compress, uncompress, adler32, zlib
  191. .RS 4
  192. Namespaces used by the zlib library; a relatively small number of symbols are used without these prefixes\&.
  193. .RE
  194. .PP
  195. krb5, gss, GSS, asn1, decode_krb5, encode_krb5, profile, mit
  196. .RS 4
  197. Some of the prefixes used by the MIT GSSAPI library and dependencies thereof; a number of symbols lie outside these prefixes\&.
  198. .RE
  199. .PP
  200. pakchois_
  201. .RS 4
  202. Namespace used by the pakchois library\&.
  203. .RE
  204. .PP
  205. px_
  206. .RS 4
  207. Namespace used by the libproxy library\&.
  208. .RE
  209. .SS "Argument validation"
  210. .PP
  211. neon does not attempt to validate that the parameters passed to functions conform to the API (for instance, checking that pointer arguments are not
  212. NULL)\&. Any use of the neon API which is not documented to produce a certain behaviour results is said to produce
  213. \fIundefined behaviour\fR; it is likely that neon will segfault under these conditions\&.
  214. .SS "URI paths, WebDAV metadata"
  215. .PP
  216. The path strings passed to any function must be
  217. \fIURI\-encoded\fR
  218. by the application; neon never performs any URI encoding or decoding internally\&. WebDAV property names and values must be valid UTF\-8 encoded Unicode strings\&.
  219. .SS "User interaction"
  220. .PP
  221. As a pure library interface, neon will never produce output on
  222. \fBstdout\fR
  223. or
  224. \fBstderr\fR; all user interaction is the responsibility of the application\&.
  225. .SS "Memory handling"
  226. .PP
  227. neon does not attempt to cope gracefully with an out\-of\-memory situation; instead, by default, the
  228. \fBabort\fR
  229. function is called to immediately terminate the process\&. An application may register a custom function which will be called before
  230. \fBabort\fR
  231. in such a situation; see
  232. ne_oom_callback\&.
  233. .SS "Callbacks and userdata"
  234. .PP
  235. Whenever a callback is registered, a
  236. userdata
  237. pointer is also used to allow the application to associate a context with the callback\&. The userdata is of type
  238. \fBvoid *\fR, allowing any pointer to be used\&.
  239. .SS "Large File Support"
  240. .PP
  241. Since version 0\&.27\&.0, neon transparently uses the "LFS transitional" interfaces in functions which use file descriptors\&. This allows use of files larger than 2GiB on platforms with a native 32\-bit
  242. off_t
  243. type, where LFS support is available\&.
  244. .PP
  245. Some neon interfaces use the
  246. ne_off_t
  247. type, which is defined to be either
  248. off_t
  249. or
  250. off64_t
  251. according to whether LFS support is detected at build time\&. neon does not use or require the
  252. \-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
  253. macro definition\&.
  254. .SH "SEE ALSO"
  255. .PP
  256. ne_session_create(3),
  257. ne_oom_callback,
  258. \m[blue]\fB\%https://notroj.github.io/neon/\fR\m[]
  259. .SH "AUTHOR"
  260. .PP
  261. \fBJoe Orton\fR
  262. .RS 4
  263. Author.
  264. .RE
  265. .SH "COPYRIGHT"
  266. .br