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.TH "NEON" "3" "23 May 2006" "neon 0.26.1" "neon API reference"
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.SH "NAME"
neon \- HTTP and WebDAV client library
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.PP
neon is an HTTP and WebDAV client library. The major abstractions exposed are the HTTP
\fIsession\fR, created by
ne_session_create; and the HTTP
\fIrequest\fR, created by
ne_request_create. HTTP authentication is handled transparently for server and proxy servers, see
ne_set_server_auth; complete SSL/TLS support is also included, see
ne_ssl_set_verify.
.SH "CONVENTIONS"
.PP
Some conventions are used throughout the neon API, to provide a consistent and simple interface; these are documented below.
.SS "Thread\-safeness and global initialization"
.PP
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
\fBgetaddrinfo\fR
interface, which neon supports; some others implement
\fBgethostbyname\fR
using thread\-local storage.
.PP
To allow thread\-safe use of SSL in the OpenSSL and GnuTLS libraries neon must be configured using the
\-\-enable\-threadsafe\-ssl; if this is done, locking callbacks will be registered by
ne_sock_init; note that care must be exercised if neon is used in conjunction with another library which uses OpenSSL or GnuTLS.
.PP
Some platforms and libraries used by neon require global initialization before use; notably:
.TP 3
\(bu
The
SIGPIPE
signal disposition must be set to
\fIignored\fR.
.TP
\(bu
OpenSSL requires global initialization to load shared lookup tables.
.TP
\(bu
The SOCKS library requires initialization before use.
.TP
\(bu
The Win32 socket library requires initialization before use.
The
ne_sock_init
function should be called before any other use of neon to perform any necessary initialization needed for the particular platform.
.PP
For some applications it may be necessary to call
ne_i18n_init
to initialize the internationalization support in neon.
.SS "Namespaces"
.PP
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
\fInamespace prefix\fR. An application which ensures it uses no names with these prefixes is then guaranteed to avoid such collisions.
.PP
The neon library reserves the use of the namespace prefixes
ne_
and
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.
.TP
SSL, ssl, TLS, tls, ERR_, BIO_, d2i_, i2d_, ASN1_
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.
.TP
XML_, Xml[A\-Z]
Namespaces used by the expat library.
.TP
xml[A\-Z], html[A\-Z], docb[A\-Z]
Namespaces used by the libxml2 library; a relatively small number of symbols are used without these prefixes.
.SS "Argument validation"
.PP
neon does not attempt to validate that the parameters passed to functions conform to the API (for instance, checking that pointer arguments are not
NULL). Any use of the neon API which is not documented to produce a certain behaviour results is said to produce
\fIundefined behaviour\fR; it is likely that neon will segfault under these conditions.
.SS "URI paths, WebDAV metadata"
.PP
The path strings passed to any function must be
\fIURI\-encoded\fR
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.
.SS "User interaction"
.PP
As a pure library interface, neon will never produce output on
\fBstdout\fR
or
\fBstderr\fR; all user interaction is the responsibilty of the application.
.SS "Memory handling"
.PP
neon does not attempt to cope gracefully with an out\-of\-memory situation; instead, by default, the
\fBabort\fR
function is called to immediately terminate the process. An application may register a custom function which will be called before
\fBabort\fR
in such a situation; see
ne_oom_callback.
.SS "Callbacks and userdata"
.PP
Whenever a callback is registered, a
userdata
pointer is also used to allow the application to associate a context with the callback. The userdata is of type
\fBvoid *\fR, allowing any pointer to be used.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.PP
ne_session_create(3),
ne_oom_callback