[Spice-devel] connection-URL for spice

[Alon Levy]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 04:51:36PM +0100, Tiziano Müller wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 26.12.2010, 09:55 +0200 schrieb Alon Levy:
> > On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 01:22:38PM +0100, Tiziano Müller wrote:
> > > Hi everyone
> > > 
> > > What do you think about having a spice URL (scheme)?
> > > The idea behind this is that we would like to register a protocol
> > > handler in the browser (or in the OS) to automatically start the spice
> > > client based on a certain URL.
> > > 
> > > examples:
> > >   spice://somehost:port/?password=sekrit&fullscreen=true
> > >   spices://somehost:sport/?password=sekrit&fullscreen=true
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately I did not find a way to have the browser or the OS parse
> > > the arguments before calling the registered protocol handler. Thus I
> > > either have to code a wrapper around the spice client to do that job or
> > > extend the spice client argument parser to accept an url as a parameter.
> > > Since I prefer latter, I started by extending the Application class by a
> > > url parser method and added a new command line flag '--url''.
> > > 
> > > examples:
> > >   spicec --url "spice://somehost:port/"
> > > 
> > > Opinions? Would this be useful for others as well or should I rather
> > > write a wrapper?
> > 
> > I like the --url parameter. Just another command line argument, I don't know
> > if the length restrictions (i.e. argument list length maximum - I think 64k on
> > linux, not sure on windows, but I think less) will be a problem. Or charset.
> Length is probably not a problem unless you try to pass complete
> certificate chains in the uri (which is probably not what you ever
> want).
> 
> Charset actually may be a problem as soon as we pass passwords along.
> Following RFC3986 we should expect certain chars to be Percent-Encoded.
> 
> > Our current solution is based on around a separate protocol over a pipe between
> > a plugin to the browser and the spicec executable. Since there is some duplication
> > here I would suggest you try to reuse the code from the controller class.
> 
> You would add another connect method then?

I guess this depends if you plan to use the existing spicec or the upcoming spice-gtk.
Haven't looked if spice-gtk implements the control pipe. But if you plan to use spicec then
I see there is in client/controller.h a Controller interface, already implemented by Application,
so I guess just calling the same methods? nothing radical :) I probably shouldn't have even
mentioned it since it looks pretty obvious. Just add stuff to Application I guess.

But notice the comments from Marc about the url scheme - better not end up having two
schemes..

> 
> > 
> > Also, the controller protocol solves the problem of continued interaction between
> > the spice client and the browser. But I think it's usable to also have a url scheme
> > where you just launch and forget.
> That's my first goal, yes.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tiziano
> 
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