HTTP headers

[448191]

I'm thinking about having Http_Header ValueObjects.

 

Motivation:

 

1. Ensure that headers are valid

2. Simplify setting of headers by providing a set (and documented) list of available headers when editing.

 

So I set off and created a Http_Header class. And I was pretty pleased with the simplicity and elegance of it (aside from the long winded names). A Header object is created pretty simply:

 

$header = new Backbone_Http_Header_Response(Backbone_Http_Header_Response::H_TESTHEADER, "test");

 

Obviously it doesn't check if the value of the header is valid (other than that it's a string), but I'm not so sure I even want to implement that.

 

What I'm doing is the following:

 

a) For easy editing, I declare all the possible headers as constants, and assign codes to them (borrowed from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en_us/library/ms537417.aspx).

b) To be able to check if a header name is valid, I use reflection to create a static associative array of header names, indexed by code.

c) To fetch the name of a Header instance, lookup the instance's header code in the static array.

 

Backbone_Http_Header lists header names valid for both responses and requests, subclasses Backbone_Http_Header_Response and *_Request headers specific to a respectively a request or a response.

 

Anyway, the reason for my post: isn't there some sort of build-in functionality that can accomplish this? I get the feeling that I am reinventing the wheel... 

[448191]

It does however work very nicely with Zend Studio's autocomplete:

 

[448191]

Unless someone can point out some serious performance concerns, I guess it's a keeper.