HTTP API support spec

[jcspencer]

For my RethinkDB usecase, use over HTTP is an important characteristic, and I am willing to build a HTTP API client for rethinkdbdash.

Currently, I need to know modifications need to be made to rethinkdbdash? The only other queries I currently have are:

• What type encoding does the current ReDB HTTP API use?
• What are the differences between the HTTP before and after the removal of protobuf encoding?
• If there were HTTP protocol differences after the removal of the protobuf encoding step, does rethinkdbdash have to be compatible with versions <1.12?

[neumino]

You probably shouldn't use the HTTP API provided by RethinkDB. It's not secured at all -- it's used only by the web interface because the web interface is supposed to run only on trusted networks. You probably want to build a simple server that will forward the queries to the database.

If you still need it, the protocol currently uses the Buffer class provided by browserify.

The reason why I didn't build an HTTP API in rethinkdbdash is to keep the code clean. I didn't want having to check everywhere which protobuf library I was using. I also didn't want to have browserify as a dependency.

I'm not quite sure what's the encoding for the JSON API will be, but probably UTF8. I plan to completely remove protobuf from rethinkdbdash for 1.13.

[jcspencer]

Just for clarification, if rethinkdbdash was to become the official JS driver for RethinkDB, would it need to support the HTTP API?

[neumino]

That or the server would need to be updated to handle queries in a different way.