Send back response data while still processing

[bilbothebaggins]

I wanted to implement a very simple HTTP server to query some large/slow datasets in our buildsystem.
This means that generating the data for a GET request can take many seconds.

I noticed that the programming model with all Write-PodeXXXResponsefunctions - most collapsing to Write-PodeTextResponse as far as I can tell - is to collect all the data and then send back the headers and body in one go at the end of the route.

This is quite inconvenient in my case.
I would have preferred to be able to send the response data incrementally.

A hypothetical API:

# Do some input validation
...
# Start fetching data
...
# Send response headers (it's fine to do this in one block)
Write-PodeHeaders ...
while (...) {
  # Once data available
  Write-PodeBodyTextPart $firstPartOfData
  ...
}
...

I know I could start fiddling with Response.Send() or the underlying request, but it seems this would be very flaky.

Am I maybe missing something?

[mdaneri]

Use https://badgerati.github.io/Pode/Tutorials/Routes/Utilities/SSE/ for that

[bilbothebaggins]

Use https://badgerati.github.io/Pode/Tutorials/Routes/Utilities/SSE/ for that

Thanks for the tip.

I note at first glance:

For a request to be convertible, it must have an Accept HTTP request header value of text/event-stream

Did you mean to say SSE would be a drop-in, or rather that the use-case can be adapted to use SSE?

[mdaneri]

I responded a bit hastily. SSE is a web browser feature. If you need to feed a webpage with data, this is the most technically sound solution to use. However, if your request is not coming from a web page, other methods like a multipart stream can be employed.

[bilbothebaggins]

Hmm ... isn't multipart/form-data an upload feature?