http-noupgrade

merge 'upgrade' requests back into the 'request' listener

example

var http = require('http-noupgrade');
 
var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    if (req.headers.upgrade) {
        repl.start({ input : req, output : res });
    }
    else res.end('beep boop');
});
server.listen(8000);

---

$ nc localhost 8000
GET / HTTP/1.1
Upgrade: true

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2012 23:57:43 GMT
Connection: close

# repl party server
> 1+2
3
> 'abc'
'abc'
> 4+5+2*5
19
> ^C

hypothesis

Emitting an 'upgrade' event with (request, socket, head) parameters makes using and writing websocket server handlers much more complicated than it needs to be. Because the necessary events are spread out across both 'upgrade' and 'request', websocket libraries tend to have an install() mechanism for adding the listeners themselves. This is unfortunate because it obscures the correspondence between the original http request and the resulting duplex stream. Instead of just passing a (req,res) explicitly to a handler after performing session checks, the websocket or fallback abstraction takes control of the http server by punching methods, events, and otherwise being hacky and brittle.

Since http request and response objects can already be paired to make a full duplex connection, have well-understood and expected semantics, and more adequately describe the actual http protocol in the case of an upgrade, we should just let the 'request' listener handle 'upgrade' events instead of using a separate event.