# HTTPCore
-I started to dive into implementation and API design here.
-
-I know this isn't what you were suggesting with `requests-core`, but it'd be
-worth you taking a slow look at this and seeing if there's anything that you
-think is a no-go.
-
-`httpcore` provides the same proposed *functionality* as requests-core, but at a slightly
-lower abstraction level.
-
-Rather than returning `Response` models, it returns the minimal possible
-interface. There's no `response.text` or any other cleverness, `response.headers`
-are plain byte-pair lists, rather than a headers datastructure etc...
-
-**The proposal here is that `httpcore` would be a silent-partner dependency of `requests3`,
-taking the place of the existing `urllib3` dependency.**
-
----
-
-The benefits to my mind of this level of abstraction are that it is as
-agnostic as possible to whatever request/response models are built on top
-of it, and exposes only plain datastructures that reflect the network response.
-
-* An `encode/httpcore` package would be something I'd gladly maintain. The naming
- makes sense to me, as there's no strictly implied relationship to `requests`,
- although it would fulfil all the requirements for `requests3` to build on,
- and would have a strict semver policy.
-* An `encode/httpcore` package is something that would play in well to the
- collaboratively sponsored OSS story that Encode is pitching. It'd provide what
- you need for `requests3` without encroaching on the `requests` brand.
- We'd position it similarly to how `urllib3` is positioned to `requests` now.
- A focused, low-level networking library, that `requests` then builds the
- developer-focused API on top of.
-* A big chunk of this is implemented now. Streaming requests and responses are
- supported. Connection pooling is stubbed-out at the moment, but all in place.
- GZip decoding is stubbed-out at the moment, but easy to do, and all in place.
- Theres various stuff around connection closing and error handling still to finesse.
-* Take a quick look over the test cases or the package itself to get a feel
- for it. It's all type annotated, and should be easy to find your way around.
-* I've not yet added corresponding sync API points to the implementation, but
- they will come.
-* We would absolutely want to implement HTTP/2 support.
-* Trio support is something that could *potentially* come later, but it needs to
- be a secondary consideration.
-* I think all the functionality required is stubbed out in the API, with two exceptions.
- (1) I've not yet added any proxy configuration API. Haven't looked into that enough
- yet. (2) I've not yet added any retry configuration API, since I havn't really
- looked enough into which side of requests vs. urllib3 that sits on, or exactly how
- urllib3 tackles retries, etc.
-* I'd be planning to prioritize working on this from Mon 15th April. I don't think
- it'd take too long to get it to a feature complete and API stable state.
- (With the exception of the later HTTP/2 work, which I can't really assess yet.)
- I probably don't have any time left before then - need to focus on what I'm
- delivering to DjangoCon Europe over the rest of this week.
-* To my mind the killer app for `requests3`/`httpcore` is a high-performance
- proxy server / gateway service in Python. Pitching the growing ASGI ecosystem
- is an important part of that story.
-* I think there's enough headroom before PyCon to have something ready to pitch by then.
- I could be involved in sprints remotely if there's areas we still need to fill in,
- anyplace.
+A low-level async HTTP library.
+
+## Proposed functionality
+
+* Support for streaming requests and responses. (Done)
+* Support for connection pooling. (Not done, but structure in place)
+* gzip, deflate, and brotli decoding. (Not done, but structure in place)
+* SSL verification. (Done)
+* Proxy support. (Not done)
+* Support *both* async and sync operations. (Sync will be lightweight shim on top of async. Not done.)
+
+## Motivation
+
+Some of the trickier remaining issues on `requests-async` such as request/response streaming, connection pooling, proxy support, would require a fully async variant of urllib3. I considered and started work on a straight port of `urllib3-async`, but having started to dive into it, my judgement is that a from-scratch implementation will be less overall work to achieve.
+
+The intent is that this library could be the low-level implementation, that `requests-async` would then wrap up.
+
+## Credit
+
+* Some inspiration from the design-work of `urllib3`, but redone from scratch, and built as an async-first library.
+* Dependant on the absolutely excellent `h11` package.
+* Uses the `certifi` package for the default SSL verification.
+
+## Usage
```python
import httpcore
...
```
+## Building a Gateway Server
+
The level of abstraction fits in really well if you're just writing at
the raw ASGI level. Eg. Here's an how an ASGI gateway server looks against the
API, including streaming uploads and downloads...