For a more robust solution, you only want to push a HTML parser onto a stream that has announced itself as MIME-type of
. I did that for a client once, and have talked about the code in
, and hope to have it published soon. In there, I said:
I have (unpublished) a dynamic-pre-forking Apache-style web streaming
proxy server in about 300 lines of pure Perl (using HTTP::Daemon and
the other LWP items, of course). It takes the same parameters as
Apache child management:
### configuration
my $HOST = 'www.stonehenge.com';
my $PORT = 42001; # 0 = pick next available user-port
my $START_SERVERS = 4; # start this many, and don't g
+o below
my $MAX_CLIENTS = 12; # don't go above
my $MAX_REQUESTS_PER_CHILD = 250; # just in case there's a leak
my $MIN_SPARE_SERVERS = 1; # minimum idle (if 0, never start new)
my $MAX_SPARE_SERVERS = 12; # maximum idle (should be "single brow
+ser max")
And acts accordingly, using a simple scoreboarding mechanism similar
to the Apache method.
Using this code, the apache-benchmark program shows that I'm only half
as fast as Apache, and has one quarter the footprint!
The best part is that in those 300 lines, I handle full SSL streaming
(the CONNECT call), full content streaming (I was watching live-feed
quicktime movies through the proxy), and if the content-type is
text/html, an HTML parser in token mode is inserted, allowing
real-time rewriting. For example, I could insert <font color=blue>
tags around all <a href=> links, while not impeding the stream of the
rest of the HTML... there'd just be a hiccup while the <a href=> was
being noticed.
The code was originally written as a work for-hire for a client who
had intended my work to become open source. But the client
dot-bombed, so I'm still trying to get clarification of whether I can
release the code under my own copyright. As soon as that clears up,
expect a WebTechniques column or two on it. :)