[Haskell-cafe] HTTP client libraries

[John Goerzen]

Hi folks,

I was recently looking for HTTP client libraries for Haskell.  I
investigated several, and it seems that there aren't any really ready
for primetime.  Am I missing anything?  Here's what I found:

* Bjorn's String-based HTTP

  It eats RAM.  Does not appear to read data lazily, returns a String,
  and may have a memory leak as well.  Does not appear to be suited
  for anything except very small file downloads.

* nominolo's ByteString port of Bjorn's HTTP

  Appears to exist only in a darcs repo linked from his personal blog.
  Makes me hesitant to use it in production code, for fear that it
  won't be around long-term.

* tagsoup

  Broken in many ways.  Does not support chunked encoding that is
  mandated by HTTP RFC.  Will be incompatible with numerous HTTP
  servers, and the manual states as much.  Port 80 hardcoded.

* network-minihttp

  Doesn't appear to actually be very useful as a client.

Also, as far as I have been able to deduce, none of these have
built-in support for https (SSL) URLs.

There is also a Curl binding (or two?) floating around, which I
haven't investigated.  It would be nicer to have a native Haskell
solution.  Or should I just go write one?

-- John