Making Strides in Open Source: Enhancing HTTP Testing and DNS Management

Recent development efforts have focused on contributing to two significant open-source projects: Hurl and Starchart. Progress has been made in both areas, with a focus on understanding existing codebases, implementing new features, and addressing ongoing maintenance tasks.

Diving Deep into Hurl: Enabling Queries on HTTP Redirects

A key focus has been on a feature request for the Hurl project, specifically the ability to perform queries on HTTP redirects. This involved a thorough investigation of the existing codebase to understand the request/response process.

Understanding the Hurl Workflow

To better grasp the inner workings of Hurl, code reading was prioritized, looking at existing pull requests, focusing on the hurl::http::client file. Using diagrams, the process flow was traced, revealing the sequence of function calls and data structures involved from parsing the Hurl file to making HTTP requests. Key insights included:

• Entry and Call Structure: Hurl files are parsed into entries. Each entry can contain one call (for direct requests) or multiple calls (in cases with redirections). Each call represents a single HTTP request-response pair.
• Capture and Assert Evaluation: Hurl uses the final call in the Vec<Call> to evaluate captures and assertions.
• Data Structure: a diagram was made to clarify the data structures involved in processing.

Implementing the Redirect Query Feature

The challenge was to enable queries across the entire chain of HTTP requests, including redirects. The entry::run function, which returns the Vec<Call>, was identified as the key area to modify.

The core issue was that the evaluation process (query::eval_query) only had access to the final HTTP request’s response. To address this, two potential solutions were considered:

1. Create a helper function to extract all HTTP responses from the list of calls and modify the relevant evaluation functions to accept an array of HTTP responses.
2. Modify the http::Response structure to include a list of redirections or references to previous responses.

The first approach was chosen, leading to the development of a pull request to implement the feature.

Clippy’s Corner: Optimizing Rust Code

The Rust compiler’s linting tool, Clippy, highlighted an optimization opportunity. The use of &vec![...] was flagged as useless_vec. Since ownership of the vector wasn’t required (indicated by the reference operator &), a slice (&[...]) was the more efficient and appropriate choice, avoiding unnecessary memory allocation.

Starchart: Maintenance and DNS Record Investigation

Work on the Starchart project involved a combination of routine updates and more in-depth investigations.

Dependency Updates

Keeping dependencies up-to-date is crucial for security and stability. Eighteen packages were successfully upgraded, resolving a minor conflict where all remix packages needed to be updated simultaneously.

Investigating MX Records

Testing DNS configurations, particularly MX records, presented a challenge due to the lack of a deployed development server. Leveraging the aws client within the mock server’s Docker container (to avoid installing numerous dependencies locally) allowed for successful retrieval and verification of the created MX records. This provided confidence that the DNS record creation process was functioning correctly.

Debugging the samlify Breakage

The samlify package, a dependency of Starchart, had been experiencing issues since version 2.8.11. Upgrading and analyzing the error messages revealed a problem related to the AllowCreate attribute in SAML authentication requests. Further investigation uncovered an existing issue and a pending fix within the samlify repository, providing a clear path forward.

Conclusion: Continuous Learning and Contribution
These type of projects show the iterative nature of software development, and the importance of continuous learning.

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