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Generator-like Client response #2269
Description
Hi,
I would request a new feature in the library: allowing to read data from httplib::Client in a generator-like way.
The problem is that currently, to read data progressively, we will need to use callback function. An example can be found in this section: https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib?tab=readme-ov-file#receive-content-with-a-content-receiver-1
std::string body;
auto res = cli.Get("/large-data",
[&](const char *data, size_t data_length) {
body.append(data, data_length);
return true;
});What I propose is to instead, allow using res as a generator, for example:
std::string body;
auto res = cli.Get("/large-data");
while (res->has_data()) {
body.append(res->data(), res->len());
res->next();
}This will be useful for the use case where we need to pipe the response back to set_chunked_content_provider in httplib::Server (for example, doing a reverse proxy)
Activity
ngxson commentedon Nov 11, 2025
Otherwise, if there is a way to just give the
Resultreturned byClient::Get()back to server'sResponse, I think it can also be a nice solutionyhirose commentedon Nov 14, 2025
@ngxson, thanks for the suggestion! It looks like it would need a lot of changes to httplib.h. I'll check how hard it is to implement when I have time.
yhirose commentedon Dec 2, 2025
@ngxson I implemented your suggestion at #2281. If you have any additional comments, please let me know. Thanks!
https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib/blob/master/README.md#streaming-api
https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib/blob/master/README-stream.md